WORK

Jan. 2018-present       Policy Analyst, Electronic Frontier Foundation

  • Wrote blog posts relating to California state legislation, free speech online, and intellectual property issues for leading digital rights group.
  • Conducted interviews, wrote reports, and prepared literature and videos for activist campaigns to sway Congress on key legislation.

Oct. 2012-Nov. 2017   Tech Policy Editor, Ars Technica

  • Covered technology law and policy for international tech website with 9 million unique visitors monthly.
  • Filed gavel-to-gavel coverage of high profile civil and criminal cases, including: Apple v. Samsung, Oracle v. Google I and II, and some of the biggest “patent troll” cases in history. Followed key technology cases for years, through appeals courts and up to the Supreme Court.
  • Covered the Silk Road “Darknet” drug trial, and an award-winning feature on police corruption in the Silk Road investigation.
  • Reported and wrote feature story about Edward Snowden’s early online history, fielded national press follow-ups and interview requests to Ars Technica on the subject.
  • Full list of Ars Technica stories available at: http://arstechnica.com/author/joe-mullin/

Sep. 2011-Sep. 2012   Reporter, Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley

  • Won competitive journalism fellowship to focus year-long reporting project on the patent economy, patent litigation, and patent trolls.
  • In January, turned focus to reporting on major patent trials for com and ArsTechnica.com.
  • Wrote a series of stories for Wired Magazine about the Eolas trial, a massive patent case against Yahoo, Google and major media companies. Stories featured exclusive reporting on Sir Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web inventor, testifying in court for the first time.

Oct. 2010-Sep.2011    Reporter, paidContent (GigaOm)

  • Covered legal affairs for paidContent, a website covering the economics and business of digital media (later owned by GigaOm).
  • Coverage included: copyright and piracy; online privacy; antitrust regulation and litigation; intellectual property (IP) disputes relating to digital media; FCC and FTC regulation of digital media companies; and other topics.
  • Broke exclusive stories on Righthaven, a controversial copyright-enforcement company that sued over bloggers’ use of newspaper articles. See WYNC’s On The Media interview citing me on this topic: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2011/04/22/02

Jan. 08-Oct. 2010       Reporter, Intellectual Property (IP) Law, American Lawyer Media (ALM)

  • Worked as San Francisco-based reporter covering copyright, patent and trademark litigation for Corporate Counsel magazine (circ. 43,000) and ALM’s national group, including The American Lawyer magazine and SF-based Recorder.
  • Covered high-profile IP lawsuits, including: the first class-action trademark lawsuit against Google; the closely watched Viacom v. YouTube copyright lawsuit; the ACLU v. Myriad Genetics lawsuit that may ban human gene patents; the Apple v. HTC patent lawsuit over Google Android; and the i4i v. Microsoft patent dispute.

July 07-Jan. 08            Reporter, Intellectual Property, SF Daily Journal, San Francisco, CA

  • Covered intellectual property for California’s largest legal daily. Scooped ALM competitors repeatedly before being hired by ALM.
  • Created and authored company’s first IP news blog.

Jan. 07-July 07            Reporter, The Associated Press, Carson City, NV

  • Wrote up to four stories daily while covering 2007 Nevada Legislature, focusing on state senate. Balanced breaking political news with long features on prison growth, medical data-mining, and water politics.

June 06-Dec. 06          Reporter, The Seattle Times, circ. 220,000

  • Covered crime, metro, suburban desks.

2002-2006                   Freelance Reporter, various

  • Wrote an investigative piece about one of the nation’s largest infomercial schemes, an early partner to Trump University (The Sacramento Bee, summer 2006.)
  • Also published in The Oakland Tribune, The Bakersfield Californian, the San Jose Mercury News, and San Francisco Magazine.

EDUCATION

  • University of California, Berkeley. Graduate School of Journalism, Masters in Journalism, May 2006
  • University of California, Berkeley. BA, History, May 2001

AWARDS

  • Received Bloomberg Business Reporting Prize (2005) and Investigative Reporting Prize (2006) at UC Berkeley
  • Society of Professional Journalists Award for Excellence in Technology Reporting (2017) at Ars Technica