BRIAN KAHIN
Brian Kahin is Senior Fellow at the Computer & Communications Industry Association in Washington, DC. He is also Research Investigator and Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information and an advisor to the Provost’s Office. Recent projects include Patents and Diversity in Innovation, Designing Cyberinfrastructure for Collaboration and Innovation, and Cyberinfrastructure, Innovation, and University Policy. Kahin’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Directorate General for Research of the European Commission.
Kahin’s work addresses public policy and the political economy of knowledge, innovation, information technology, and intellectual property. Reflecting his own background in academia, industry, and government, he stresses the importance of policy debate and analysis that reflects diverse perspectives, the need for informed, empirically grounded, multidisciplinary policy development, and the need for academic research that is accessible and useful to the national and international policy community. He currently blogs in the Huffington Post – the only blog on patent policy targeted to the public rather than patent specialists.
From 1989 to 1997, Kahin served as founding Director of the Information Infrastructure Project at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Initiated by Kahin and Lewis M. Branscomb, the Information Infrastructure Project was the first academic research program to address the social, economic, and policy implications of the Internet. The Project was supported by a mix of special funding from foundations and federal agencies and general funding from corporations, including Bellcore, AT&T, IBM, Hughes, Motorola, EDS, Nynex, Digital Equipment, Apple, McGraw-Hill, and Microsoft. Kahin developed an aggressive publishing program with MIT Press and collaborated with a wide range of institutions, including the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, the Coalition for Networked Information, the Freedom Forum, the Annenberg Washington Program, the Library of Congress, the Cross-Industry Working Team, the Computer Systems Policy Project, and the International Telecommunication Union. As Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School, Kahin developed courses on information technology, law, and policy, including a joint course with Harvard Business School on information technology, business strategy and public policy and then, with Harvard Law School as a third partner, a course on business and the Internet.
In 1997, Kahin was appointed Senior Policy Analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he was responsible for issues in intellectual property, Internet policy, and electronic commerce. As part of the Administration’s task force on global electronic commerce, he initiated the interagency Working Group on the Digital Economy and chaired it on behalf of the National Economic Council. He also served as Vice Chair of the OECD Working Party on the Information Economy. He was the first chair of the interagency working group on domain names and worked with the research agencies and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to develop the Administration’s position on database protection legislation. He initiated studies on patent quality and standards policy at the Science and Technology Policy Institute.
After leaving the government in 2000, he became the first (and only) resident fellow at the Internet Policy Institute in Washington and a visiting scholar at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (University of California, Berkeley). He subsequently became founding Director of the Center for Information Policy and Visiting Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, with affiliate appointments in the School of Public Affairs and the R.H. Smith School of Business. His work at the Center included projects on open source software, U.S. and European perspectives on software patents, and the economic and social implications of information technology. From 2003 to 2005, he taught at the University of Michigan as a Visiting Professor with joint appointments in the School of Information, the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and the Department of Communication Studies. He became senior fellow at CCIA in 2005, while remaining affiliated and active with the University of Michigan.
Kahin authored the principal RFC on commercialization of Internet (RFC 1192; 1990). He is the editor of Building Information Infrastructure (McGraw-Hill/Primis, 1992) and co-editor of Public Access to the Internet, (with James Keller, 1995), Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (with Janet Abbate,1995), National Information Infrastructure Initiatives (with Ernest Wilson, 1996), Borders in Cyberspace (with Charles Nesson, 1997), Coordinating the Internet (with James Keller, 1997), Internet Publishing and Beyond (with Hal Varian, 2000), Understanding the Digital Economy (with Erik Brynjolfsson, 2000), Transforming Enterprise (with William H. Dutton, Ramon O'Callaghan, and Andrew W. Wyckoff, 2004), and Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy (with Dominique Foray, 2006).
Kahin currently serves on the board of the Public Patent Foundation and European Policy for Intellectual Property and on the advisory board of the Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure. Kahin was appointed to the U.S. Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy in 1995 and chaired the Committee's Working Group on Intellectual Property, Interoperability and Standards until he joined the government. He was a member of the 1992-94 Association of American Universities Task Force on a National Strategy for Managing Scientific and Technical Information. He was cited by Newsweek as one of the "Net 50" of 1995. Kahin has also served on the board of Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, the editorial advisory boards of the Boston University Journal of Science & Technology Law and Cyberspace Lawyer, and the advisory board of the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities. He was on the original steering committee for the Software Patent Institute (1990-91) and subsequently served on the advisory board. He was co-editor of the journal Information Infrastructure and Policy (IOS Press) from 1994 to 1996.
Kahin helped found the Interactive Multimedia Association in 1987 and served as part-time General Counsel for ten years. He directed IMA's Intellectual Property Project, managed testimony on patent policy, negotiated the IMA’s participation in the European IMPRIMATUR consortium, and organized public programs with the U.S. Copyright Office. (In 1997, IMA merged with the Software Publishers Association, now the Software and Information Industry Association.)
As a consultant, Mr. Kahin's clients have included EDUCOM (now EDUCAUSE), the Council on Library Resources, and the U. S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment. As an attorney, he served as principal counsel to FARNET (Federation of American Research Networks) and the International Interactive Communications Society, the society for professionals in multimedia.
In 1983-85, Mr. Kahin was coordinator for the Research Program on Communications Policy at MIT and the MIT Communications Forum under Ithiel de Sola Pool. Kahin has also been director of an arts and technology project for a state arts agency, executive director of a media arts organization, lawyer in general practice, and screenwriter. He manages a rental operation on the family ranch in Dubois, Wyoming, where he is also an investor in the revitalization of the historic Ramshorn Inn.
Kahin is a graduate of Harvard College (1969) and Harvard Law School (1976).