John Samuel Gibson
John Samuel Gibson is an American trial lawyer and litigator who serves as chair of the United Nations’ AI for Good law track and is lead counsel for some of the world’s top technology companies. He is a DLA Piper partner and co-chair of the firm’s U.S. Business and Commercial Litigation practice. John has deep experience analyzing and litigating issues involving new technology platforms and ecosystems as they seek to balance incentives for both development and adoption. He is committed to exploring the use of foundational legal tools to conquer fundamental challenges posed by AI’s emergence—and thus help make “AI ready for the world, and the world ready for AI.”
In 35 years of practice, John has won high-profile trials and save-the-company cases for industry leading technology, life sciences, and healthcare companies, professional sports teams, celebrities, and pro bono clients seeking social justice. These range from winning what the media called the “Trial of the Decade” in Los Angeles and winning one of California’s top jury verdicts in 2022 to winning the nation’s first mandatory federal court injunction requiring a school district to accommodate the service dog of a student with autism. John has also figured prominently in litigation involving emerging technology ecosystems. He defeated a threatened injunction against launch of a leading mobile-device maker’s 4G devices regarding the client’s role in technical standard-setting for 4G-LTE mobile technology. And he won summary judgment for a leading global technology company—defeating an unfair competition law claim in a precedent-setting litigation to determine fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms for a worldwide portfolio of standard-essential mobile-telecommunications patents. He has also represented clients in many non-litigation interactions with governments and competition law enforcement agencies around the world.
John has been named one of The Best Lawyers in America, as well as one of the Daily Journal’s Top Antitrust Lawyers of the Year, and is rated AV Preeminent 5.0 out of 5.0 by Martindale-Hubbell. He won the Burton Award for being one of the “finest law firm writers of 2019” in a ceremony presided over by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
John has spoken internationally on issues at the intersection of law and technology. He was a speaker on the topic of “Developing Standards For 3D Printing” at The Legal, Regulatory and Business Conference on 3D Printing in Chicago and “SEPs and FRAND: The US Approach” at the EU Competition Law: Current Issues in a Global Context event in Brussels. John also authored the article “Antitrust Law in the AI Age; Navigating the New Frontier,” published in the Daily Journal.
He has served on numerous charitable boards and is a member, alongside former U.S presidents, Supreme Court justices, and Nobel Prize winners, of the Washington, D.C.-based Cosmos Club for “persons of scholarship, creative genius, or intellectual distinction.”
John earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, where he was a John Harvard Scholar (top 5% of undergraduate students) and his doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was an editor of the Michigan Law Review.
His multifaceted legal experience at the intersection of law and technology, his success as a leader, and his commitment to social justice make John an invaluable asset and distinguished authority sought after by the international community on the evolving landscape of AI governance.
