Richard Marks
Richard D. Marks is co-founder and president of Patient Command, Inc., McLean, Virginia, an early-stage company that is developing a secure personal health record system for the Internet.
Mr. Marks practiced law in Washington, D.C. from 1971 to 2003. He was a partner at Dow, Lohnes & Albertson for 25 years, and later at Vinson & Elkins and Davis Wright Tremaine. His practice included litigating intellectual property, privacy, freedom of expression, and security issues; advising and litigating on behalf of telecommunications companies; negotiating and enforcing contracts for outsourcing or acquisition of large computer systems; and advising on HIPAA.
Mr. Marks successfully argued the first case declaring a part of the Communications Act unconstitutional, and in 1998, in the U.S. Supreme Court, he argued and won a landmark First Amendment–free press case concerning televised political debates. He represented the American Association for the Advancement of Science in a friend-of-the-court brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals in a case challenging export restrictions on encryption source code.
Mr. Marks served in the U.S. Army, including a tour in Vietnam as a Captain in Military Intelligence. Assigned to the Office of Strategic Research and Analysis, Headquarters, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, his responsibilities included briefing the U.S. Ambassador, the Commanding General, MACV, and the CIA Chief of Station on political intelligence in Laos, China, Burma, and Thailand. He continued his interest in intelligence and national security matters throughout his years of legal practice. His current responsibilities at Patient Command include secure systems to maintain the privacy of personal health records.
Mr. Marks has published extensively on security and privacy issues and their intersection with the First Amendment. Among his publications are: Implementing HIPAA: Guidelines for Systems Implementation Projects, 5 ECLR (Electronic Commerce and Law Report, Bureau of National Affairs) 468 (May 3, 2000); HIPAA, Bartnicki, and Public Interest in Inherently Private Records 6 ECLR 811 (Aug. 1, 2001); Network Security: No Rest for the Wary, 8 ECLR 485 (May 21, 2003; co-author); and Member Briefing on HIPAA Security (American Health Lawyers Association, 2004; co-author). Mr. Marks has been a speaker on personal health records (PHRs) and health record banking at the 2008 and 2009 annual meetings of HIMSS, the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society. He also has been a frequent speaker on information security and corporate governance as it relates to privacy and security.
Mr. Marks is a member of the American Law Institute. He was chair of the ABA Section of Science and Technology Law’s Computer Law Division, its Program Committee, and its HIPAA Task Force, and he was an ABA member of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists. He also was a Director of the Computer Law Association, and Co-Chair of the Security Policy Advisory Group of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), and Chair of WEDI’s HIPAA security certification committee.
Mr. Marks holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate and is a certified flight instructor. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
