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

• "Stealth Commoditization: The Misuse of Smartphone Antitrust," CPI Antitrust Chronicle (September 23, 2019)  - (PDF)
• “The Case for Noncompetes,” University of Chicago Law Review (forthcoming 2020) (with Ted Sichelman).
• "Antitrust Overreach: Undoing Cooperative Standardization in the Digital Economy", 25 Michigan Technology Law Review 163 (2019) - (SSRN) - (www)
• “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", 14 Journal of Institutional Economics 1097 (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

The Washington Post
December 2, 2019
Re: Jonathan Handel

Jonathan Handel was quoted on Pete Davidson's nondisclosure agreement for attending his comedy shows, barring the audience from speaking about his shows. Handel mentioned that successfully suing a random fan for $1 million would be nearly impossible. “The optics of going to court and suing one of your fans is really pretty ugly,” Handel said. “It would be foolish to do that.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Scott Altman
October, 2019

"Are Boycotts, Shunning, and Shaming Corrupt?” Legal Theory Workshop, University of Virginia Law School, Charlottesville, VA.

Gregory Keating
October, 2019

Gregory Keating’s paper, “Is Tort Law ‘Private’?” was reviewed by Ellen Bublick as a significant work of scholarship relating to Tort Law in JOTWELL: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), on October 15, 2019.

Dan Simon
October, 2019

“Confessions True and False,” Korean Society for Criminal Law, Yonsei University Law School, Seoul, South Korea.