Jonathan Barnett

Jonathan Barnett is director of the law school's Media, Entertainment and Technology Law Program. Barnett specializes in intellectual property, contracts, antitrust, and corporate law. Barnett has published in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Journal of Legal Studies, Review of Law & Economics, Journal of Corporation Law and other scholarly journals.

He joined USC Law in fall 2006 and was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law in fall 2010. Prior to academia, Barnett practiced corporate law as a senior associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York, specializing in private equity and mergers and acquisitions transactions. He was also a visiting assistant professor at Fordham University School of Law in New York. A magna cum laude graduate of University of Pennsylvania, Barnett received a MPhil from Cambridge University and a JD from Yale Law School.

Articles and Book Chapters

• “The Certification Paradox”, in Cambridge Handbook of Technical Standardization Law, Vol. 2 (Jorge L. Contreras, ed., Cambridge University Press) (forthcoming 2019).  - (SSRN)
•  “The Patent System at a Crossroads,” 41 Regulation 44 (Spring 2018) - (PDF)
• "The Costs of Free: Commoditization, Bundling and Concentration", Journal of Institutional Economics (2018).  - (www)
• “Patent Tigers: The New Geography of Global Innovation”, 2 Criterion Journal on Innovation 429 (2017). - (www)
• “Has the Academy Led Patent Law Astray?” 32 Berkeley Technology Law Journal  1313 (2017). - (SSRN) - (www)
• "Why is Everyone Afraid of IP Licensing?" 30 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 123 (2017). - (Hein) - (www)
• "Are There Really Patent Thickets?" 39 Regulation 14 (Winter 2016-2017). - (PDF)
• "Three Quasi-Fallacies in the Conventional Understanding of Intellectual Property," 12 Journal of Law, Economics & Policy 1 (2016). - (Hein) - (www)
• "The Anti-Commons Revisited," 29 Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 127 (2015). - (Hein) - (www) - (SSRN)
• “Hollywood Deals: Soft Contracts for Hard Markets,” 64 Duke Law Journal 605 (2015). - (Hein) - (SSRN) - (bepress)
• “From Patent Thickets to Patent Networks: The Legal Infrastructure of the Digital Economy,” 55 Jurimetrics 1 (2014) - (SSRN) - (bepress) - (Hein)
• "Copyright Without Creators,” 9 Review of Law & Economics 389 (2013). - (SSRN) - (bepress)
• "Intermediaries Revisited: Is Efficient Certification Consistent with Profit Maximization?" 37 Journal of Corporation Law 475 (2012). - (SSRN) - (bepress) - (Hein)
• "The Host's Dilemma: Strategic Forfeiture in Platform Markets for Informational Goods," 124 Harvard Law Review 1861 (2011). - (www) - (SSRN) - (bepress) - (Hein)
• "What's So Bad About Stealing?" 4 Journal of Tort Law 1 (2011). - (bepress) - (SSRN)
• "Intellectual Property as a Law of Organization," 84 Southern California Law Review 785 (2011). - (SSRN) - (bepress) - (www) - (Hein)
• "Do Patents Matter? Empirical Evidence on the Incentive Thesis," in Handbook on Law, Innovation & Growth (Robert E. Litan, ed., Edward Elgar Publishing) (2011). - (SSRN) - (www)
• "The Illusion of the Commons," 25 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1751 (2010). - (Hein) - (SSRN) - (bepress)
• "The Fashion Lottery: Cooperative Innovation in Stochastic Markets," 39 Journal of Legal Studies 159 (2010) (with Gilles Grolleau and Sana El-Harbi). - (SSRN) - (bepress)
• "Property as Process: How Innovation Markets Select Innovation Regimes," 119 Yale Law Journal 384 (2009). - (SSRN) - (Hein) - (bepress)
• "Is Intellectual Property Trivial?" 157 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1691 (2009). - (Hein) - (SSRN) - (bepress)
• "Certification Drag: The Opinion Puzzle and Other Transactional Curiosities," 33 Journal of Corporation Law 95 (2007). - (Hein) - (SSRN) - (bepress)
• "Shopping for Gucci on Canal Street: Status Consumption, Intellectual Property and the Incentive Thesis," 91 Virginia Law Review 1381 (2005). - (Hein) - (SSRN)
• "Private Protection of Patentable Goods," 25 Cardozo Law Review 1251 (2004). - (Hein) - (SSRN)
• "Rational Underenforcement of Vice Laws," 54 Rutgers Law Review 423 (2002). - (Hein) - (SSRN)
• "Cultivating the Genetic Commons: Imperfect Patent Protection and the Network Model of Innovation," 37 San Diego Law Review 987 (2000). - (Hein) - (SSRN)
• "Rights, Costs, and the Incommensurability Problem," 86 Virginia Law Review 1303 (2000). - (Hein)

Other Publications

• “Digital Disruption Demands Antitrust Restraint”, The Hill, July 4, 2018 (also posted at Competition Policy International, July 4, 2018).   - (www)
• “SCOTUS is about to decide to hear the easiest antitrust case ever”, The Hill, March 31, 2018 (also posted at Competition Policy International, April 2, 2018).   - (www)
• "Does the Supreme Court Understand the Innovation Economy?" (with Ted Sichelman), Forbes, July 13, 2017. - (www)
• “An Economic Argument Against Mandatory Patent Exhaustion” (with Ted Sichelman), Patently-O, March 19, 2017. - (www)
• "Amicus Brief of 44 Law, Economics and Business Professors in Support of Respondent in Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., Supreme Court of the United States" (Filed Feb. 23, 2017) (co-lead author, with Ted Sichelman).
    - (SSRN)

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

KPCC-FM's "Take Two"
October 15, 2018
Re: Edward McCaffery

Edward McCaffery was interviewed about the potential effects of Trump’s new tax plan on Californians, saying “…when you impact the deficit, the first effect you see is interest rates go up. And of course, that hurts the kind of people who don’t have money but need to borrow money, which again, are the kinds of people who live in the 25th district.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Jonathan Barnett
August, 2018

Jonathan Barnett's paper, "The Certification Paradox," was listed on SSRN's Top Ten download list for: Corporate Law: Corporate & Financial Law: Interdisciplinary Approaches eJournal.

John Matsusaka
August, 2018

"Opportunistic Proposals by Union Shareholders" (with Oguzhan Ozbas),  Review of Financial Studies.

Thomas D. Lyon
August, 2018

"Children’s Conversational Memory Regarding a Minor Transgression and a
Subsequent Interview" (with Stacia N. Stolzenberg and Kelly McWilliams), Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 24 (2018): 379.