Entertainment Law
Entertainment Law is a term for a law practice consisting of a number of traditional categories of law, with a focus on the intricacies of the entertainment industries. Generally speaking this often involves issues related to contracts, licensing, copyright, trademark, rights of publicity, financial securities, business entity formation, negotiations, agency, immigration, employment and labor law.
Much of the entertainment lawyer's work is transactional, but when a problem arises, often the only way to reach a resolution is through an adversarial process, such as a lawsuit (litigation), or arbitration, or through the less confrontational process of mediation.
Vincent J. Kostiw is experienced in both transactional and adversarial matters, and can help you in good times and more trying times should the need arise.
To practice Entertainment Law a lawyer must not only understand applicable law, but also have a knowledge of, and a background in the entertainment industries / businesses; Yes, industries / businesses, plural. The film business operates nothing like the television business. The music business works nothing like the theatre business, and so on.
For a lawyer to practice "entertainment law", he or she must understand the oddities of the entertainment businesses in general, and how the different entertainment businesses work independently of one another and also work together. For instance, if you are working in television, all of the contracts must be completed before shooting begins. The contract terms are always vague and are heavily favoring the producers over the performers. While a film contract may not even be drafted until after principal photography (filming) begins and may not be finalized until long after the film is completed.
These differences drive lawyers with no experience in entertainment crazy and baffles those lawyers who took an "entertainment law" course in law school. A lawyer cannot practice in this area without practical experience in the entertainment industries. He or she won't "get it"!
General practice lawyers love to draft "small print" and may hold up your business deal for weeks or months while combing through this "small print". In the entertainment industries, more often than not there is no "small print"! With the exception of television, much of the contract work for an entertainment lawyer consists of drafting or negotiating "deal memos" or "memorandums of understanding" and the long form contracts with the "small print" comes later, if ever. The reason for this is that the entertainment businesses move very quickly, attempting to catch waves of interest and trends. Something that may be popular today may be as unpopular as Von Dutch tomorrow.
In many cases, the parties either do not have time or do not want to pay to have a "long form" contract drafted and negotiated. The parties need to move quickly to catch a trend. An experiences entertainment lawyer will recognize this and protect his or her client as much as possible given the limitations on time and cost and not get hung up in the "small print".
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Photography and Image Rights.
So you went on vacation and took some great photographs with your new digital camera. Some are of famous buildings, some have people in them, some don’t. You post them on your website and get comments from your friends about how great the photos are and that you should sell them to a magazine.
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Copyright Preregistration.
Copyright preregistration is a service intended for works that have had a history of prerelease infringement. Copyright preregistration focuses on the infringement of movies, recorded music, and other copyrighted materials before copyright owners have had the opportunity to fully complete or market their products.
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Internet Domain Names as Trademarks.
Registering and using a domain name is easy, just be the first person to register it, or purchase the registration rights from someone else. As long as you pay your registration fee each year you can use the domain name as you wish, provided you are not breaking the law or infringing on another’s rights. However, using a domain name in commerce to the point that it can receive federal trademark registration is not so easy, and in some cases not possible.
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Obscenity Laws.
With the ever shortening attention span of the public, entertainers and entertainment providers keep pushing the envelope, presenting content that is often more “edgy” and outrageous than ever. Content that was taboo just a decade ago is finding its way not only into satellite/cable broadcasting but also onto the public airwaves as part of popular primetime traditional network programs.