Entertainment & Copyright Law

I represent clients in Intellectual Property matters related to Copyright and Trademark law. I have advanced degrees in Mass Communication, Software Engineering, and Law, and have over 15 years of experience working in entertainment and corporate marketing communications.

What is a Copyright?

Copyright is a form of protection given to the authors of “original works of authorship.” Original works can include literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. Copyright protection is available to both published and unpublished works.

Who owns a Copyright?

The person who owns a copyright can include an individual who created the original work, a company or organization whose employee created the original work, or a person or company who specially ordered or commissioned the original work.

Purchasing (or receiving as a gift) an authorized copy of a book, movie, photograph, song… does not mean you own the copyright to that particular item. While you can generally sell or give away that particular item (meaning you would no longer possess it yourself), you can not make additional copies to sell or give away. The right to sell and distribute copies is retained by the copyright owner.

What rights does a Copyright owner have?

Determining who actually owns the copyright of a particular work is important, because the actual owner has the exclusive right to do, and to authorize others to do, the following things:

• Reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords (“phonorecord” includes cassette tapes, CDs, LPs, 45 r.p.m. disks, as well as other formats);

• Make derivative works based upon the work;

• Distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

• Perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works;

• Display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and

• In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission. (Note that sound recordings are defined as “works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sounds accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work.” Common examples include recordings of music, drama, or lectures. A sound recording is not the same as a phonorecord. A phonorecord is the physical object in which works of authorship are embodied.)