John Tehranian

John is a founding partner of One LLP, where his practice focuses on intellectual property and entertainment litigation and counseling.  John has handled high-profile disputes and transactions involving numerous legends from the worlds of music, film, fashion, theater, photography, literature, and athletics.  He has served as counsel in various published appellate decisions on copyright matters, including Mavrix v. Brand Technologies, 647 F.3d 1218 (9^th Cir. 2011), Direct Technologies v. Electronic Arts, 836 F.3d 1059 (9^th Cir. 2016), Mavrix v. LiveJournal, 873 F.3d 1045 (9^th Cir. 2017) and Ventura Content v. Motherless,885 F.3d 597 (9^th Cir. 2018).  He also led the trial team in Hargis v. Pacifica (C.D. Cal. 2023) to victory with a $6.3 million jury verdict, the largest maximum statutory damages award for photography infringement in U.S. history. 

Variety’s Legal Impact Report has recognized John as one of the world’s top 50 entertainment lawyers, Billboard Magazine has identified him as one of the top music lawyers in the business, and he has been repeatedly honored as a Southern California Super Lawyer. 

A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, John is the author of dozens of articles and three books: Whitewashed (NYU Press, 2009), Infringement Nation (Oxford University Press, 2011), and The Secret Life of Copyright (Cambridge University Press, 2025).  His work been widely cited in congressional testimony, federal, state and foreign court decisions, and briefs before the United States Supreme Court in such landmark intellectual property cases as Warhol v. Goldsmith (2022), Google v. Oracle (2021), Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons (2013), Golan v. Holder (2012), and MGM v. Grokster (2005).

As an academic, John serves as the Paul W. Wildman Chair and Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School.  He has previously served as a tenured Professor of Law at the University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law, and as a Visiting Professor of Law at Loyola Law School and UCLA School of Law.