Advanced Entertainment Law: Review
Today’s blog serves as a review on my latest course with Full Sail University; Advanced Entertainment Law. Looking back at my expectations for this course, I wanted to learn about IP laws and how to better understand contracts. This course has definitely delivered. Advanced Law Entertainment’s instructor, Cassandra Willard takes a deep look into Intellectual Properties and it’s categories as we discussed Trademarks, Patents, Copyrights and Trade Secrets and the importance to safeguard a company’s brand-identifiers from infringement.
As part of the course we took a look at various court cases, artists management contracts and contests proposals focusing on how to protect your company from infringement and avoid liabilities. One of the cases discussed was Panavision v. Dennis Toeppen. A case of dilution of Trademarks where Toeppen intentionally creates domains using trademarked names in order to extort money from its original owners. This here is a clear example of why it is important to protect your company’s name, logo and slogan federally under IP Laws.
Another interesting case was Eminem v. UMG, where Eminem sues Universal Music Group over miscalculations of royalties. UMG was underpaying Eminem’s former production team. The contract signed was for 50% of licensing of all digital music sales as UMG was paying Eminem’s team the regular artist cut of 18-20%. Needless to say Eminem’s team won. This case shows for the importance of attention to details with agreements and contracts. Make sure you know what you are signing before you actually put your name on the dotted line.
In conclusion, if you are serious about your company and brand, protect it. No one is safe from infringement if its Intellectual property isn’t safeguarded. When it comes to contracts, read carefully. Consider help from an entertainment attorney/lawyer as for contract’s language may seem confusing and at times used purposely to confuse the signee.
