Jon M. Garon

Director of Law & Informatics Institute, Northern Kentucky Chase College of Law

Course Director: Intellectual Property for Small Businesses

Professor Garon is an attorney and professor of informatics, entertainment, intellectual property and business law. He has extensive practice experience in the areas of film, music, theatre, and publishing, data privacy and security, business planning, copyright, trademark, and software licensing.

He is the inaugural director of the Law & Informatics Institute, dedicated to promoting thoughtful public discourse on the regulation and use of information systems. His teaching and scholarship often focus on business innovation and the development of best business practices regarding the exploitation and effectiveness of the information and data systems in business, health care, media, and entertainment, and the public sector.

Professor Garon emphasizes the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to informatics, combining practical solutions with in-depth theoretical inquiry. Through the Institute he researches in the fields of intellectual property law, privacy law, business law, and international law, exploring the regulation and utilization of information, including its creation, acquisition, aggregation, security, manipulation and exploitation.

Prior to joining Chase, Professor Garon served as dean and professor of law at Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota as well as Interim Dean of the Hamline Graduate School of Management. Before Hamline, Professor Garon taught entertainment law, intellectual property, and business law courses at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire and Western State University College of Law, in Orange County, California.

A member of the Bar in California, New Hampshire and Minnesota, Garon also has extensive practice experience. From 1988 to 1989, he worked at Shea & Gould and its successor firm Myerson & Kuhn in Los Angeles, California, specializing in entertainment law, film financing, recording agreements, business formation, and copyright and trademark licensing. From 1990-1993, he ran a solo practice in Laguna Beach, California, where he practiced a wide range of entertainment, corporate, and transactional law. From 1994-1996, he worked for Hawes & Fischer, in Newport Beach, California, facilitating growth of its entertainment law practice, and negotiating and drafting software development, multimedia, and music agreements. In 2000, he joined the law firm of Gallagher, Callahan, and Gartrell, where he remains an of counsel member of the firm. He has extensive practice experience in the areas of entertainment law, business planning, copyright, software licensing, data privacy and security, and trademark law.

Professor Garon has written numerous books and articles, including The Independent Filmmaker’s Law & Business Guide to Financing, Shooting, and Distributing Independent and Digital Films (A Cappella Books, 2d Ed. 2009); Own It – The Law & Business Guide to Launching a New Business through Innovation, Exclusivity and Relevance (Carolina Academic Press 2007); Entertainment Law & Practice (Carolina Academic Press 2005) (supplement 2007); and Theater Law: Cases and Materials (Carolina Academic Press 2004) (co-author).

His B.A. is from the University of Minnesota and his J.D. Columbia University School of Law.