John Swinson's principal interests are intellectual property law, Internet law, privacy law, AI law, cybersecurity law and the application of law to new technologies.
John graduated from the T.C. Beirne School of Law in 1988 with a University Medal. He also has a Bachelor of Arts majoring in computer science from The University of Queensland and a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School where he studied as a Fulbright Fellow and a Frank Knox Scholar. In 1989, John worked as a judge's associate to Justice C W Pincus of the Federal Court of Australia. John is admitted to the NY Bar, and worked as an associate at Kenyon & Kenyon in NYC from September 1991 to January 1997. From 1999 until 2017, John was an adjunct professor at QUT.
John was a partner at the law firm King & Wood Mallesons from 1999 to 2021. He was also Chairman of the auDA Policy Review Panel, which made recommendations to the auDA Board to revise Australia's domain name policies in 2019.
Since 2000, John has been an arbitrator for the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva, and has decided over 720 disputes regarding the ownership of domain names.
John commenced as a professor at the T.C. Beirne School of Law in November 2017.
