Professional Summary

Jonathan Band received a B.A., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1982 from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1985. From 1985 to 2005, Mr. Band worked at the Washington, D.C., office of Morrison & Foerster LLP, including thirteen years as a partner. Mr. Band established his own law firm in May, 2005. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and before the U.S. Supreme Court.


Practice Description

Mr. Band helps shape the laws governing intellectual property and the Internet through a combination of legislative and appellate advocacy. He has represented clients with respect to the drafting of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA); database protection legislation; the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act; and other federal and state statutes relating to copyrights, counterfeiting, privacy, spam, spyware, cybersecurity, gambling, and indecency

Mr. Band complements this legislative advocacy by filing amicus briefs in significant cases related to these provisions. The amicus brief he authored for library associations was cited in Justice Breyer's  opinion for the majority in Kirtsaeng v. John A. Wiley & Sons. Other amicus briefs Mr. Band drafted have been cited by appellate and district courts.  

Mr. Band’s policy practice has an international dimension as well. He has worked on the Marrakesh Treaty; the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement; the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement; the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership; the United States, Mexico and Canada Free Trade Agreement; the Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention and Hate Speech Protocol; the Hague Convention on Exclusive Choice of Court Agreements; and several free trade agreements. He also has submitted comments concerning the revision of intellectual property laws in countries as diverse as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Korea, South Africa, and Israel.

Mr. Band’s deep substantive knowledge of the application of intellectual property law to information technology permits him to counsel clients on the scope of copyright protection for computer programs; secondary liability and the DMCA’s safe harbors for Internet service providers; the DMCA’s prohibition on the circumvention of access and copy control technology; the protection of online databases; the fair use status of digitization projects; and other complex intellectual property issues. 

Mr. Band has testified in Congress ten times, including before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the Marrakesh Treaty; the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration on the Register of Copyrights; the Senate Committee of the Judiciary on patent litigation reform and the DMCA; before the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet on the DMCA, First Sale and the Collections of Information Antipiracy Act; and before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Fair Use.

Mr. Band's clients include Internet companies, providers of information technology, universities, and library associations. Mr. Band has represented parties-in-chief in appellate litigation. See, e.g., Gates Rubber Co. v. Bando Chemical, Inc., 9 F.3d 823 (10th Cir. 1993). His administrative litigation experience includes representing the City and County of San Francisco in noise matters before the Federal Aviation Administration, and the State of Alaska in a matter relating to the Exxon Valdez oil spill before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Professional Activities

Mr. Band has written extensively on intellectual property and electronic commerce matters, including the books Interfaces on Trial: Intellectual Property and Interoperability in the Global Software Industry, Interfaces on Trial 2.0, and Interfaces on Trial 3.0: Oracle America v. Google and Beyond, eight book chapters, seventeen law review articles, over 140 trade press articles, and more than 175 blog posts.

Mr. Band frequently makes presentations on intellectual property and electronic commerce issues before trade and professional associations, advocacy organizations, and government bodies. Some of these presentations have been broadcast on C-SPAN and other cable and Internet networks.

Mr. Band served as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught courses on copyright law and the intellectual property legislative process. Additionally, Mr. Band has been a guest lecturer on intellectual property topics at numerous law schools, including Yale and Columbia.

Mr. Band has been quoted as an authority on intellectual property and Internet matters in numerous publications, including Clarin Information (Argentina), Asahi Shimbun (Japan), Nikkei Electronics (Japan), The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Forbes, Business Week, National Journal, The Boston Globe, The Houston Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, Newsweek, and Wired. Additionally, he has been interviewed on National Public Radio, MSNBC, and CNN.

Mr. Band was a trustee of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. and was on the Editorial Board of The Computer and Internet Lawyer and the Journal of College and University Law. He has chaired the intellectual property committee of the ABA’s Administrative Law Section; the Copyright and New Technology Committee and the Copyright Protection Subcommittee of the Computer Programs Committee of the ABA’s Intellectual Property Law Section; the Legal and Policy Issues Task Group of the Interactive Multimedia Association; and the National Information Infrastructure Subcommittee of the Copyright Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association. He is a member of the District of Columbia, California, and American bar associations, as well as of the AIPLA and the Computer Law Association. 


Awards 

In 2017, Mr. Band received the America Library Association's L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award, which recognizes an individual who has supported the Constitutional purpose of the copyright law, fair use, and the public domain. 

In 2024, Mr. Band received Public Knowledge's IP3 Award for intellectual property.

Mr. Band was selected a "SuperLawyer" in the intellectual property category by ThomsonReuters more than a dozen times.

Mr. Band received the first Community Service Award of the International Section of the District of Columbia Bar in recognition of his pro bono work on the U.N. Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. He also has been honored for his pro bono work in the immigration area by the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. 

Mr. Band was part of the legal team that secured a Presidential Pardon for Freddie Meeks, one of the survivors of the Port Chicago disaster. 


Personal Information

Mr. Band was born in Los Angeles, California. He is married to Leesa Fields, and has two children -- Jeremy and Jessica. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.