What Does an Entertainment Lawyer Do?
Entertainment law, which frequently coincides with intellectual property matters, encompasses an extensive spectrum of legal subdivisions, including, though not limited to contracts, copyrights, patents and trademarks.
Other People Are Reading
-
Entertainment Lawyers
-
Entertainment lawyers advocate the rights of creative artists, such as musicians, singers, actors, producers, directors, writers, reporters and/or commentators, among other entertainers involved in media industry, depending upon specialization. They may represent clients from intellectual law capacity, defending victims of copyright infringement, individuals deprived of their unique creations and innovations without receiving due compensation. Entertainment law combines a conglomeration of legal disciplines ranging from labor/employment law to litigation, among numerous other professional specializations regarding the entertainment industry.
Copyright Law
-
Copyrighted information incorporates a miscellaneous mixture of literary works, artistic designs and musical compositions. Such creations may include written publications, like books, plays, poems or sheet music. Other innovations that constitute the category of copyright information include audio data, sound/music recordings, musical scores, albums, tapes, CD's, visual images including paintings, drawings and photographs. Also included are audiovisual productions, which involve digital animations such as motion pictures, graphic designs and Internet websites.
-
Nature & Content of Copyright Protection
-
Copyright laws protect the owner from any undue deprivations toward original creations, providing immunity against various violations involving, "reproduction, distribution, adaptation, public performance, public display, linguistic translations, and conversion of media, such as adapting a novel into screen play" (Bennett, Sherrie, 1).
Licensing Agreements
-
A license authorizes the right to designate property possessed by another for some specific use, via contractual engagement. Someone may engage in a contract that relinquishes certain rights of the original creation to another, via licensing agreement. Hence, the license reserves a right to permit appropriation of another person's work for some designated purpose through contractual agreement. Once the owner, or licensor, relinquishes her rights of some particular work, the licensee acquires exclusive, proprietary possession. However, the agreement permits licensor, or original creator of intellectual property, latitude to profit from her creative work by charging the user a fee for use. For example, I engaged in a contract that allowed Demand Studios the right to use this writing at its sole, proprietary discretion. In return, Demand Studios accommodates me by reciprocating an equitable payment, as compensation, corresponding commensurately to the value of work I provide, which we both accepted via contract. As sole owner of this work, Demand Studios thus possesses the exclusive right to perform any revisions deemed fit, as its independent discretion. Licensing agreements extend to the application of copyrights, patents and trademarks.
Labor & Employment Law
-
Labor & Employment Law represents the domain regarding employment issues, such as collective bargaining, workplace discrimination, sexual harassment and salary requirements.
Rights of Celebrity Entertainers
-
While entertainers, particularly those who attain a degree of prestige or celebrity status in their respective talent, naturally relinquish certain individual rights to privacy, they still possess constitutional freedom, protection blackmail, violent threats, and undue deprivation toward personal/intellectual property. Indeed, the public automatically imposes a lofty expectation of morale upon celebrity entertainers, as determined by law. However, crimes involving defamation, directed against celebrities, only receive protection when it substantially jeopardizes celebrity reputation, such that the targeted defamation severely denigrates salary & personal image, as deemed by a court of law.
Discrimination Against Entertainers
-
As for discrimination, sometimes entertainers become severely subject to various predicaments involving professional exploitation, by engaging in exclusive, one-sided contracts that potentially undermine their subsequent career. For example, advertisement contracts/management agreements may subtly discriminate against an entertainer by creating some insidious situation whereby the contractor exclusively benefits at the entertainer's detriment and demise. These illicit, one-sided contracts may deprive entertainers of significant salary potential. Such controversies frequently necessitate litigation, whereby parties commence a civil action lawsuit before state, federal, and/or administrative courts, to compensate entertainers for the unconscionable torts committed against them.
-
