Jack Lerner has been Clinic Fellow at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic since January 2005. While at the Clinic, Jack has counseled policymakers, scientists, artists, nonprofit organizations, and academics as they confront problems where law, technology, and public policy intersect, in conjunction with teams of Samuelson Clinic Student Interns. Jack also co-teaches the companion seminar with Professor Deirdre Mulligan, which provides a forum for exploring the links between legal theory and the cases and projects on which students are working.
Before coming to the Samuelson Clinic, Jack was Research Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, where he worked to develop a nonprofit digital music distribution system modeled after proposals to reform the current entertainment industry and intellectual property system via collective licensing and revenue-pooling regimes. Prior to his work with the Berkman Center, Jack practiced law with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. in Palo Alto, California, where he counseled and represented technology companies in disputes involving intellectual property, privacy, internet marketing, and e-commerce issues.
After graduating with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1999, Jack clerked for the Hon. G.T. VanBebber of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas and the Hon. Fred I. Parker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Jack's research interests include finding solutions to intellectual property-related challenges faced by developing countries, the intersection between the internet and intellectual property, and the law and policy of music sampling and other types of creative reuse of music.
Admitted: California, 2002, #220661; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2003; U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, 2003; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 2005.