State of Play VI: Speakers' Bios

Profile

Professor David Johnson and and his team of students at New York Law School’s Institute for Information Law & Policy helped to draft the nation’s first legislation that will make it easier to form and operate companies online, creating new opportunities for distributed work and innovation via the Internet.  The Governor of Vermont recently signed Digital Corporate Transactions H.0458 into law.  Johnson’s work with the State of Vermont is part of a larger project to foster a new type of economic production by allowing flexible collaboration among self-selecting, transient online groups.

Professor Johnson  is a graduate of Yale College (B.A. 1967, summa cum laude) and Yale Law School (J.D. 1972).  In addition, he completed a year of post-graduate study at University College, Oxford (1968).  Following graduation from law school, he clerked for Judge Malcolm R. Wilkey of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.  Mr. Johnson joined Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in 1973 and became a partner in 1980. He recently retired as a partner of WCP and is devoting substantial time to the development of new types of “graphical groupware” software products. His previous legal practice focused primarily on the emerging area of electronic commerce, including counseling on issues relating to privacy, domain names and Internet governance issues, jurisdiction, copyright, taxation, electronic contracting, encryption, defamation, ISP and OSP liability, regulation, and other intellectual property matters. He helped to write the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, was involved in discussions leading to the Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, and has been active in the introduction of personal computers in law practice.  Currently, he is a Visiting Professor at New York Law School where he teaches Cyberlaw.