David W. Maher was General Counsel Emeritus of Public Interest Registry until May 31, 2019. In September 2004 he became senior vice president for law and policy of Public Interest Registry (PIR). From 1999 until 2002, he served as vice president for public policy of the Internet Society. In 2002, he became a member of the founding board of PIR and served as chairman until August 2004.

Maher is a registered patent attorney with extensive experience in intellectual property, communications and entertainment law. He is admitted to the bar in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Maher served for more than 20 years as general counsel to the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois Inc. and was the recipient of the bureau’s Torch of Integrity Award in 1999. He was a director of the Bureau until 2015.

In 1996, as a well-regarded authority on Internet domain names, Maher was asked by the Internet Society to serve on the 11-member International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC). In 1997, he became chairman of the Policy Oversight Committee, the successor to IAHC. The IAHC developed proposals that included, for the first time, provisions for expeditious resolution of disputes with cybersquatters. These proposals were later adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and now form the nucleus of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which provides a global system for resolving trademark/domain name disputes. Maher is a member of the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center Panel of Neutrals.

Maher currently serves as a member of the Advisory Council to the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Maher is a cum laude graduate of Harvard College with a bachelor’s degree in classics (Latin), and he earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1959. He is a member of the American Law Institute and has lectured and written articles on the Internet, intellectual property and communications law.