John Thorne
John Thorne, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Verizon Communications

John Thorne is Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Verizon Communications Inc., where he works on antitrust, complex litigation, intellectual property, internet, merger review, privacy, trade regulation, wireless, and strategic initiatives. He is also a member of the adjunct faculty at Columbia Law School and the Georgetown University Law Center where he teaches a class in telecommunications law.

Mr. Thorne was counsel of record for Verizon in Verizon v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko, LLP , 540 U.S. 398 (2004), and represented Verizon's predecessor in NYNEX v. Discon , 525 U.S. 128 (1998). Verizon won both these antitrust cases, nine to zero. He was counsel of record in a recent case to protect internet subscriber privacy, Recording Industry Ass = n of America v. Verizon Internet Servs., Inc. , 351 F.3d 1229 (D.C. Cir. 2003), cert. denied, 125 S. Ct. 309 (2004). His First Amendment case striking down the 1984 Cable Act ban on telephone companies providing video entertainment allowed Verizon to offer FiOS TV service. Chesapeake & Potomac Tel. Co. v. United States , 830 F. Supp. 909 (E.D. Va. 1993), aff'd , 42 F.3d 181 (4th Cir. 1994), dismissed as moot , 516 U.S. 415 (1996).

Mr. Thorne is a coauthor of the principal academic treatises on telecommunications regulation, cited repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court, Federal Telecommunications Law (Aspen Law & Business 2d ed. 1999 & Supps. 2004, 2005 & 2006) and Federal Broadband Law (Little Brown & Co. 1995). Recent articles include A Categorical Rule Limiting Section 2 of the Sherman Act: Verizon v. Trinko , 72 U. Chi. L. Rev. 289 (2005); Discounted Bundling by Dominant Firms , 13 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 339 (2005). His remarks to the New York Bar Association on the 20th anniversary of the AT&T breakup were reprinted in Vital Speeches of the Day, May 15, 2004. His keynote address to the Madrid meeting of the International Bar Association, “Five Freedoms,” was reprinted in Vital Speeches of the Day, June 1, 2005.

Mr. Thorne was a summa cum laude mathematics major at Kenyon College, graduated Order of the Coif and law review articles editor at Northwestern University Law School, and clerked for Chief Judge Walter Cummings of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Global Competition Review, March 2005, named Thorne one of the top worldwide “stars of the in-house competition bar.”