Khouane Ditthavong

Khouane Ditthavong focuses his practice on patent preparation and prosecution, regulatory counseling, tort and environmental litigation, and international environmental law.  He was formerly with the law firm of King & Spalding LLP.

In addition, Mr. Ditthavong has extensive industry experience in software development and design.  He has designed, programmed, and/or implemented Laboratory Information Management Systems, software for processing environmental data, multimedia presentation systems, and web-based database systems.

EXPERIENCE

• Serving as counsel and secretariat to the North American Metals Council, an association consisting of North American metals producers and users, to advocate on their behalf in U.S. and international fora regarding science- and policy-based issues of significance to the metals sector.
• Conducted several hundred interviews with client inventors across a variety of technical fields including information management, data processing, client-server architecture, user interface development, software optimization, among other fields.
• Served as counsel and secretariat to the North American Metals Council, an association consisting of North American metals producers and users, to advocate on their behalf in U.S. and international fora regarding science- and policy-based issues of significance to the metals sector.
• Served as counsel to the Coalition for Mercury Management, a group of trade associations and companies concerned with mercury in the environment.
• Handled discovery issues and preparing fact and expert witnesses in mass toxic tort litigation.

Before entering private practice, Mr. Ditthavong was an analytical chemist specializing in the analysis of organic and inorganic chemicals in environmental media for over ten years including five years as an environmental scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water.  While at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he developed regulations to adopt new environmental monitoring technologies for use in the Agency’s Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act environmental monitoring programs.  He also helped to establish Clean Water Act effluent limitations and guidelines for nine industrial categories.  He coordinated and/or participated in the development software and information systems for managing analytical methods and data.

Before joining the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Mr. Ditthavong worked for DynCorp and Versar Laboratories where he was responsible for researching and developing new technologies and techniques for measuring a variety of pollutants in the environment.  As part of these responsibilities, he developed proprietary software and systems to interface with analytical instruments for automated data collection, management, and processing.

Mr. Ditthavong has presented more than 16 papers at various national conferences and seminars on topics such as scientific protocols for validating analytical test methods, options for streamlining the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s compliance monitoring program, and the effects of the European Union’s new chemicals policy on North American companies.

EDUCATION

• J.D. (cum laude), American University Washington College of Law
  • Member of the American University International Law Review
• B.S. in Biology, Georgetown University
  • Sigma Xi, Scientific Research Society

Mr. Ditthavong is admitted to the Virginia State Bar and the District of Columbia Bar, and is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  He currently serves as Vice President of Communications on the Board of Directors of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of D.C.

Mr. Ditthavong’s recent publications include: “contributing sections on international regulation of chemicals to the American Bar Association’s “International Legal Developments in Review” in 2006 (41 Int’l Law. 201) and 2007 (in print); “Legal Backgrounder: New European Chemicals Policy Imperils U.S. Economic Growth,” Washington Legal Foundation (Vol. 18, No. 33), August 8, 2003.