Panelist Biographies
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Fred Von Lohmann,
Senior Intellectual Property Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Fred von Lohmann is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property issues. In that role, he has represented programmers, technology innovators, and individuals in litigation against every major record label, movie studio, and television network (as well as several cable TV networks and music publishers) in the United States. In additon to litigation, he is involved in EFF's efforts to educate policy-makers regarding the proper balance between intellectual property protection and the public interest in fair use, free expression, and innovation.
Fred was named one of 2004's 100 most influential lawyers in California by the Daily Journal, a leading legal newspaper, and received a 2003 CLAY award (California Lawyer of the Year) from California Lawyer magazine. He was also named one of the 50 Agenda Setters for 2003 by UK publication Silicon.com. He has appeared on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, CNBC, ABC's Good Morning America, Fox News O'Reilly Factor, C-SPAN, and TechTV's ScreenSavers and has been widely quoted in a variety of publications, including in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Billboard, US News & World Report, CNET News, Wired News, TIME magazine and a number of leading legal newspapers. His opinion pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News.
The EFF matters in which he is involved include:
- MGM v. Grokster: representing Streamcast Networks, developers of the Morpheus software application, in a lawsuit brought by 28 entertainment companies alleging that Streamcast should be held liable for the activities of its end-users. Fred argued this case on appeal before the Ninth Circuit, leading to a groundbreaking ruling by the Court in August 2004 in favor of StreamCast, Grokster and innovators generally.
- Broadcast Flag and Digital TV: working to represent the voice of consumers and innovators before the FCC and BPDG in the debate over the "broadcast flag," Hollywood's scheme to sneak federally-mandated content protection technology into all digital television devices.
- JibJab's "This Land": representing JibJab Media, creators of the fantastically popular animated election-year parody "This Land," in their effort to resist copyright threats from the purported owners of Woody Guthrie's classic American song, "This Land is Your Land." EFF ultimately succeeded in proving that the song is in the public domain.
- AcompliaReport.com: representing the publisher of AcompliaReport.com, a source of independent news about the drug Acomplia, against Sanofi-Aventis, the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world, which claims that the site is not entitled to use the drug's trademarked name in its Internet domain name.
Before joining EFF, Fred was a visiting researcher with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, where his research focused on the impact of peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies on the future of copyright. Prior to his research fellowship, Fred was an attorney with the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, concentrating on transactions and counseling involving the Internet and intellectual property.
Fred has also served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Thelton Henderson, of the US District Court for Northern California, and Judge Betty B. Fletcher, of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He received both his undergraduate and law degrees from Stanford University.
July 2005