Alex Gigante

Alex was formerly Executive Vice President for Legal Affairs for Penguin Group (USA) LLC, where he was responsible for setting legal policy for the company and its affiliate and subsidiaries, supervising legal and contract departments, overseeing outside counsel, directing litigation strategy, and negotiating special business projects.  Among the major intellectual property cases successfully litigated by Penguin under Alex’s supervision were Penguin Group (USA) Inc. v. Steinbeck, 537 F.3d 193 (2^nd Cir. 2008); Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 448 F.3d 605 (2^nd Cir. 2006); and Fox News Network, L.L.C. v. Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2003 WL 23281520 (S.D.N.Y. 2003).

On the corporate side, Alex was involved with many acquisitions and sales of book-publishing businesses, including most prominently the Penguin side of the merger of Penguin with Random House.  Alex also has served on many unsecured-creditors’ committees in various bankruptcy proceedings and was chairman of the committee in the bankruptcy of the giant Borders bookstore chain.

Prior to joining Penguin, Alex was a partner in his own litigation law firm for thirteen years, specializing in intellectual property matters, with particular emphasis on book publishing. Alex has also served as general counsel of Simon & Schuster and as a litigator both with the law firm of Proskauer, Rose, Goetz & Mendelsohn LLP and the New York City Law Department, where he was a division chief attorney and responsible for litigating high profile cases having a major impact on city operations, including Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35 (1975), in which the U.S. Supreme Court compelled the federal government to unfreeze $9 billion of funding for water-pollution control.

Alex is proficient in French, German and Italian and regularly counsels clients in complex international publishing transactions and intellectual property acquisitions.