Rick Shera is a partner at top niche corporate, business and Information & Communication Technology law firm, Lowndes Jordan, based in Auckland, New Zealand (www.lojo.co.nz).
Rick has a Masters degree in copyright and internet law from Auckland University, New Zealand. He heads up Lowndes Jordan’s IP/ICT team which acts for telcos, ISPs, new media companies, webdesign houses, software licensors and network providers/integrators as well as providing IP and ICT advice to business and corporate clients.
He is a past vice president of InternetNZ (www.internetnz.net.nz) and was a member of the 4 person working group responsible for the introduction of New Zealand’s current shared registry domain name structure. Rick also headed up the InternetNZ group responsible for policy development of New Zealand’s .nz domain name dispute resolution service.
More recently, Rick has been working with ISPs and copyright rights holder organisations on ISP provisions in the Copyright Act. He consulted to the Telecommunications Carriers’ Forum (an umbrella group of all New Zealand’s leading telcos and ISPs) on the development of a code of practice to deal with internet account termination for repeat copyright infringement.
Rick is a founding member and past convenor of the Auckland District Law Society’s Law and Technology Committee and is chair of NetSafe (www.netsafe.org.nz) and Hector’s World Limited (www.hectorsworld.com). He can also be found on twitter @lawgeeknz.
Apart from his involvement in the above organizations, Rick is a member of the New Zealand Computer Society, the Intellectual Property Association of Australia and New Zealand and the Institute of Directors. He is also Chair of the KidsCan Charitable Trust, which delivers food, shoes and raincoats to children in lower decile New Zealand schools and is about to bring Telethon back to New Zealand TV screens after a 15 year hiatus. He is regularly called on for comment on ICT matters in the media and has published numerous articles on ICT related matters.
