John Francis Banzhaf III (; born July 2, 1940) is an American public interest lawyer, legal activist and law professor at George Washington University Law School. He is the founder of an antismoking advocacy group, Action on Smoking and Health. He is noted for his advocacy and use of lawsuits as a method to promote what he believes is the public interest. Life and education Banzhaf was born July 2, 1940, in New York City. He graduated at the age of 15 from Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School, one of the three academically elite high-schools of the NYC Public School System. He went on to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and from Columbia Law School with a Juris Doctor. Career Banzhaf filed a complaint with the Maryland's Attorney Grievance Commission against Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, the State's attorney of Baltimore, saying she did not have probable cause to charge six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, and also that she repeatedly withheld evidence from the officers' defense attorneys. He compared her to Mike Nifong and his handling of the Duke lacrosse case. Contributions to law and public policy Copyright of computer software Banzhaf got an early start in legal advocacy. While still a student in law school, he was assigned to research and draft a note for the Columbia Law Review on whether computer programs and other software could be protected under U.S. copyright law. The United States Patent Office had previously declined to grant any patents on software, and no computer program copyrights had ever been recognized. As part of his research, Banzhaf sought to register copyrights on two programs he had written: one in printed form, and the other recorded on magnetic tape. In 1964, the United States Copyright Office registered two copyrights of Banzhaf, thereby recognizing for the first time the validity of this new form of legal protection. One year later, he testified at a congressional hearing at which he urged, ultimately successfully, that the long-awaited revision of US copyright law should expressly recognize computer and data processing issues. Measuring the power of voting blocs in a committee Banzhaf studied the Nassau County Board's voting system, which allocated the total of 30 votes to its municipalities as follows: Hempstead #1: 9 Hempstead #2: 9 North Hempstead: 7 Oyster Bay: 3 Glen Cove: 1 Long Beach: 1 A