Brian Kahin
Senior Fellow
Brian Kahin is a Senior Fellow at the Computer & Communications Industry
Association in Washington, DC, where he works on issues on patent policy and open standards.
He is also Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information and a
special advisor to the Provost's Office.
His current research focuses on the political economy of knowledge, information technology,
and intellectual property. He recently co-organized Advancing
Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy in collaboration with OECD,
the European Commission, and the National Science Foundation.
From 2003-2005, Kahin taught at the University of Michigan as Visiting Professor with joint
appointments in the School of Information, the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and the
Department of Communication Studies. Kahin was previously 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. Kahin's work at the Center included projects on open source
software, U.S. and European perspectives on information process patents, and the economic and
social implications of information technology.
From March 1997 to January 2000, Kahin served as 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 government service, he was 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) before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland
in August of 2000.
Prior to his service at OSTP, Kahin was founding director of the Information Infrastructure Project at Harvard's
John F. Kennedy School of Government. Initiated by Kahin and Lewis Branscomb in 1989, 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, and
Microsoft. It developed an aggressive publishing program 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 and information infrastructure. He initiated 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.
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, which focused on
technology-based management of content. He also 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. (IMA subsequently merged with the Software
Publishers Association, now the Software and Information Industry Association.)
Kahin's work has been supported by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the John and Mary R. Markle
Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States,
the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the U.S. Department of Energy. He
authored the principal Internet 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; MIT Press, 1995), Standards
Policy for Information Infrastructure (with Janet Abbate; MIT Press, 1995), National Information
Infrastructure Initiatives (with Ernest Wilson; MIT Press, 1996), Borders in Cyberspace (with
Charles Nesson; MIT Press, 1997), Coordinating
the Internet (with James Keller; MIT Press, 1997), Internet
Publishing and Beyond (with Hal Varian, MIT Press, 2000), Understanding the
Digital Economy (with Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Press, 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, MIT Press, 2006).
Kahin serves on the board of the Public Patent Foundation 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 served
on the advisory board until 1997. He was co-editor of the journal Information
Infrastructure and Policy (IOS Press) from 1994 to 1996.
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
received a B.A. from Harvard College in 1969 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School
in 1976. He has been a member of the Wyoming State Bar since 1976.
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