Carrie Distler

Carrie Distler is a Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting and is based in Chicago. She is a member of the Intellectual Property practice in the Forensic & Litigation Consulting segment. Ms. Distler has nearly fifteen years of professional experience in consulting and has used her economic, financial and statistical training in various litigation and non-litigation related matters. Further, she has provided expert testimony related to damages. 

Ms. Distler specializes in intellectual property disputes and management, with experience in both litigation and non-litigation related matters, involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. In the litigation context, she has performed numerous reasonable royalty and lost profit calculations and valued technology across the pharmaceutical/biotechnology, medical device, printing, electronics, telecommunications, automotive, financial services, heavy equipment and machinery, and consumer products industries. Reasonable royalty assessments have included complex financial and cost analyses to derive measures of value for patented features, use of comparable licenses to determine royalty rates (including FRAND agreements in standards setting industries), and competitive market evaluations to ascertain impacts of the patented features.

Pharmaceutical-related, Ms. Distler possesses an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the pharmaceutical market from her experience in providing liability and damage analyses related to average wholesale price litigation across multiple jurisdictions, including the roles and policies of generic and branded manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies, and third party payers. She also has performed analyses related to Paragraph IV challenges and secondary considerations of non-obviousness. Finally, Ms. Distler has experience in providing market research for assistance in licensing transactions as well as identifying potential infringers of technologies. She also has significant experience in case management of large, patent enforcement actions involving multiple defendants.

From a non-litigation standpoint, Ms. Distler has assisted in the design and implementation of a multi-billion dollar corporation’s in-licensing program in an effort to create a streamlined process for evaluating and negotiating licensing opportunities, as well as assisted in evaluating and negotiating patented technology for the purpose of licensing. She has participated in compliance management projects focused on compensation for technology under the direction of a publicly-appointed Monitor. For state governments, she has evaluated program impacts, conducted compliance audits, and participated in state-wide surveys for funding allocation purposes.

Ms. Distler’s dispute advisory experiences encompass the entire litigation process including discovery, damage analysis, preparation of expert reports, deposition and trial testimony. In addition to her intellectual property expertise, she has also worked on forensic investigations, business valuations, shareholder disputes, wrongful terminations and other labor-related matters, econometric and statistical cases, and other general commercial litigation matters. She has extensive experience in performing industry and market analyses and calculating damages based on lost sales, profits and cash flows, incremental profits, business valuations, and unjust enrichment.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Ms. Distler spent three years in the consulting practice of Pacey Economics Group in Boulder, Colorado.  Ms. Distler holds an M.A. and B.A. in economics from the University of Missouri.