Entertainment Law - Contracts, The Fiduciary Duty Of Entertainment Attorneys: Joel V. Grubman, Unique Aspects Of Entertainment Industry Contracts
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The areas of law governing professionals and businesses in the entertainment industry, particularly contracts and INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY; more particularly, certain legal traditions and aspects of these areas of law that are unique to the entertainment industry.
The entertainment industry includes the fields of theater, film, fine art, dance, opera, music, literary publishing, television, and radio. These fields share a common mission of selling or otherwise profiting from creative works or services provided by writers, songwriters, musicians, and other artists.
FURTHER READINGS
The Entertainment and Sports Lawyer (various issues).
Levitt, Carole, and Mark Rosch. 2003. "Finding Entertainment Law Online, from Scholarship to Scandals." Los Angeles Lawyer 26 (May).
Lisa Stansky. 2002. "Contracts, Rights, and Land Deals—That's Entertainment." Student Lawyer 31 (November).
Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review (various issues).
Additional Topics
The entertainment industry exists in a state of economic uncertainty. Entertainment companies continually form, merge, re-form, and dissolve. Furthermore, consumer tastes in artistic products can change quickly, thrusting certain artists or artistic movements to the heights of popularity and reducing others to obscurity. Because of this instability, the entertainment industry relies on complex con…
Joel also alleged that Grubman failed to disclose that the law firm represented Joel's label, Sony Music, and that such representation was an inherent conflict of interest that biased Grubman's judgment during contract negotiations. The law firm claimed that it had done nothing illegal or unethical in its representation of Joel, and stated that it was hired by Joel only to negotiate …
Complex Royalty and Payment Provisions Because entertainment companies often risk large losses, the contracts they use often contain clauses that artists may consider to be unnecessarily complex or one-sided. For example, film studios often base payments to talent in part on net profits. The calculations that are necessary to determine net profits, as defined in a typical contract, can be mystifyi…
Songs, plays, films, works of fine art, books, and even some choreographed works are copyrightable. The contractual terms that define the ownership and use of these works are often negotiated for months, with both the artist and the entertainment company vying for as much control of the intellectual property as possible. U.S. copyright law contains provisions that are specifically directed at the …
A new format known as MP3 (Motion Picture Experts Group-1 Audio Layer 3), which can compress and store high-quality, digital music in one-tenth of the space in which a CD can store it, has recently caused considerable legal ramifications in the entertainment industry. Access to this digitized music is widespread and growing rapidly. Electronic distribution and the digitization of music has the pot…
Concerns about long-term contracts and record labels taking advantage of rock stars have caused major stars to lobby Congress. Don Henley, Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette have spoken before Congress on the need for rock stars to represent their own interests, without so much interference or control from record companies. Singer-songwriter Don Henley, co-founder of the Recording Artists Coalition…
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