Professor Brian Fitzgerald studied law at QUT, graduating as University Medallist in Law, and holds postgraduate degrees in law from Oxford University, Harvard University, and Griffith University.

From 1998-2002, Fitzgerald was Head of the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University in New South Wales, Australia and from 2002—2007 he was Head of the School of Law at QUT in Brisbane.

Fitzgerald is a Chief Investigator and Program Leader for Law in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence on Creative Industries and Innovation. He is also the Project Leader of Creative Commons Australia and Peer to Patent Australia and is a Program Leader for the Access to Public Sector Information (PSI) Project within the CRC Spatial Information. He was Project Leader for the DEST funded Open Access to Knowledge Law Project (OAK Law) studying legal protocols for open access for the Australian research sector, and the DEST funded Legal Framework for an e-Research Project examining the legal framework needed to enhance e-Research. Both programs have been completed.

His current projects include work on intellectual property issues across the areas of Copyright, Digital Content and the Internet, Copyright and the Creative Industries in China, Open Content Licensing and the Creative Commons, Free and Open Source Software, Research Use of Patents, Patent Informatics Administration Licensing, Science Commons, e-Research, Licensing of Digital Entertainment and Anti-Circumvention Law.

Professor Fitzgerald was a member of the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce.

Brian Fitzgerald was featured in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Science Show, and The Law Report discussing the copyright related legal issues.