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Kevin Jerome Greene (born in New York City, New York) is an American lawyer and professor of contract music law and entertainment law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, California. [1] Greene was among the first legal scholars to examine the treatment of African-American art forms, such as the blues, under intellectual property law.
Greene began his undergraduate studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, then left to join the U.S. Marines, where he was assigned to an F-4 Phantom jet squadron in the Far East. After completing his Marine Corps service with honors, he received his B.A. at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, and his J.D. at Yale Law School and then clerked for James H. Brickley of the Michigan Supreme Court.[ citation needed ]
While at the Wall Street law firm of Cravath, Swaine and Moore, he represented Time-Warner/HBO and subsequently practiced entertainment law in New York City at Frankfurt, Garbus, Klein & Selz. Representative clients included film director Spike Lee, singer Bobby Brown, and the rap group Public Enemy. [2]
In 2014, Greene served as an expert witness for the legal team of funk musician George Clinton in a copyright case in the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. [3] In 2016, Professor Greene was selected as the winner in the academics category of the Vanguard Award for Innovation in Intellectual Property by the Intellectual Property Institute of the State Bar of California. In 2018, Greene was selected as a Fellow of the American Bar Association. In 2019, Greene served as the lead IP expert in a landmark right of publicity case in California state court between the heirs of the Hansen Juice company and Coca-Cola Corporation.[ citation needed ]
In 2020, Greene was hired as a tenured professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles where he is the John J. Schumacher Chair Professor. [3]
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in most of the world's legal systems.
Entertainment law, also referred to as media law, is legal services provided to the entertainment industry. These services in entertainment law overlap with intellectual property law. Intellectual property has many moving parts that include trademarks, copyright, and the "right of publicity". However, the practice of entertainment law often involves questions of employment law, contract law, torts, labor law, bankruptcy law, immigration, securities law, security interests, agency, right of privacy, defamation, advertising, criminal law, tax law, International law, and insurance law.
Personality rights, sometimes referred to as the right of publicity, are rights for an individual to control the commercial use of their identity, such as name, image, likeness, or other unequivocal identifiers. They are generally considered as property rights, rather than personal rights, and so the validity of personality rights of publicity may survive the death of the individual to varying degrees, depending on the jurisdiction.
Stanford Law School (SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% in 2021, the second-lowest of any law school in the country. George Triantis currently serves as Dean.
Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been acknowledged and protected in China since 1980. China has acceded to the major international conventions on protection of rights to intellectual property. Domestically, protection of intellectual property law has also been established by government legislation, administrative regulations, and decrees in the areas of trademark, copyright, and patent.
In the United States, a design patent is a form of legal protection granted to the ornamental design of an article of manufacture. Design patents are a type of industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture, beverage containers and computer icons are examples of objects that are covered by design patents.
Statutory damages are a damage award in civil law, in which the amount awarded is stipulated within the statute rather than being calculated based on the degree of harm to the plaintiff. Lawmakers will provide for statutory damages for acts in which it is difficult to determine a precise value of the loss suffered by the victim. This could be because calculation of a value is impractical, such as in intellectual property cases where the volume of the infringement cannot be ascertained. It could also be because the nature of the injury is subjective, such as in cases of a violation of a person's rights. The award might serve not only as compensation but also for deterrence, and it is more likely to succeed in serving a deterrence function when the potential defendants are relatively sophisticated parties. Other functions that can be served by statutory damages include reducing administrative costs and clarifying the consequences of violating the law.
Fanfiction has encountered problems with intellectual property law due to usage of copyrighted characters without the original creator or copyright owner's consent.
Joseph P. Liu is an American legal scholar working as a professor at the Boston College Law School. He has published a number of papers and articles on the subjects of intellectual property law, law and the internet, and internet regulation.
Jessica Litman is a leading intellectual property scholar. She has been ranked as one of the most-cited U.S. law professors in the field of intellectual property/cyberlaw.
Mary Wong is the vice president for strategic community operations, planning & engagement at ICANN. Prior to taking up a full-time position with ICANN, she was the founding director of the Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property and a tenured professor at the University of New Hampshire in Concord, New Hampshire, U.S.A.
Greenberg & Lieberman is a national and international law firm based in Washington, D.C. Established in 1996 by Michael Greenberg and Stevan Lieberman, the firm is known for its expertise in the technology-law areas of intellectual property, trademark infringements, domain names, virtual worlds, and software and was listed among 16 influential entities in the field of domain names in 2010. A "boutique law firm", Greenberg & Lieberman credited for being among the first in the world to begin generating a significant revenue and client base via online virtual worlds such as Second Life. Greenberg & Lieberman are also noted for their involvement with media law and military law.
McKool Smith is a U.S. trial firm with more than 130 trial lawyers across seven offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Marshall, New York City, and Washington, DC. The firm represents clients in disputes involving commercial litigation, intellectual property (IP), bankruptcy, and white collar defense matters.
Ian Ballon is an American Internet and intellectual property litigator, author of books on Internet law and executive director of Stanford University Law School's Center for E-Commerce. He is the author of the 4-volume legal treatise, E-Commerce and Internet Law: Treatise with Forms 2d edition, the leading legal reference book on Internet law, which was first published in 2000. A second edition was published in 2008 and is updated annually. He is also an intellectual property litigator with Greenberg Traurig LLP, a firm of approximately 1800 lawyers.
David Nimmer is an American lawyer, law professor, renowned as an expert in United States copyright law. He received an A.B. with distinction and honors in 1977 from Stanford University and his J.D. in 1980 from Yale Law School, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal. David Nimmer is of counsel to Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, California. He also serves as a Professor from Practice at University of California, Los Angeles Law School and Distinguished Scholar at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. In 2000, he was elected to the American Law Institute. He has served as a guest professor at the University of Haifa, Yeshiva University, the University of Miami, and Syracuse University.
Michael Greenberg is an American lawyer, regarded as a legal expert in intellectual property law and patent law. He is a partner of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm, Greenberg & Lieberman, with Stevan Lieberman, established in 1996. As part of the firm, Greenberg has been involved in hundreds of UDRP or trademark infringement disputes and is a well-regarded and experienced litigator, with particular expertise in patent infringement cases.
Stevan H. Lieberman is an American lawyer, regarded as a legal expert in intellectual property law and patent law. He is a partner of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm, Greenberg & Lieberman, with Michael Greenberg, established in 1996. As part of the firm, Lieberman has been involved in hundreds of UDRP or trademark infringement disputes, and he is considered a pioneer in the technology-law areas of virtual worlds, domain names and software, cited by CNN as "among the virtual world's earning elite." Among the first lawyers in the world to begin generating a significant revenue and client base via online virtual worlds such as Second Life; he is the co-founder and CEO of two virtual reality websites.
Robert Henry Rotstein is an American attorney and novelist currently based in Los Angeles, California. He has published four novels so far, including Corrupt Practices, Reckless Disregard,The Bomb Maker's Son and We, The Jury (2018). He is also currently a partner at the law firm of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP, focusing on entertainment law, intellectual property law and commercial litigation.
The protection of intellectual property (IP) of video games through copyright, patents, and trademarks, shares similar issues with the copyrightability of software as a relatively new area of IP law. The video game industry itself is built on the nature of reusing game concepts from prior games to create new gameplay styles but bounded by illegally direct cloning of existing games, and has made defining intellectual property protections difficult since it is not a fixed medium.
Jeffrey E. Jacobson is an American lawyer. Jacobson is a member of the Bars of the State of New York and District of Columbia. He is a notable lawyer within the entertainment and intellectual property fields.