Entertainment Law...The Stuff We Need to Know!

A really good friend of mine is currently in law school. She always talks about how stressful, difficult, and sometimes boring studying law can be. I am currently in the Advanced Entertainment Law course of my Full Sail University curriculum, and while the class work can definitely be challenging, it has been extremely interesting and very helpful!

I recently listened to the following law focused podcasts:

In the following paragraphs I am going to summarize these podcasts as well as explain how they can be applied directly to both the entertainment industry as a whole, and to my future business venture, Moguls in the Making.

This podcast hosted by Gordon Firemark and Tamara Bennett actually discussed several different legal cases within the entertainment industry that are currently being debated. One of my favorites within this podcast is the case between Victor Witmill and Warner Brothers. Witmill is currently suing Warner Brothers for the use of his tattoo design in the move The Hangover 2. Witmill designed the tattoo that is currently displayed on the face of Mike Tyson, and in The Hangover 2, the same type of design was placed on the face of one of the actors. This case stresses the importance of “dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s.” When I first heard of this case a few weeks ago my initial thought was “who is the one responsible for not putting this task on the checklist.” With major productions like film, it is very important to make sure that all legal issues are addressed and corrected before the film is released. My opinion here is that Witmill is just looking to earn a quick buck by making sure a hassle out of it, but at the same time, he may just be entitled to receive a monetary settlement for his work even though he did not copyright it within the appropriate time frame. In week one of our class we had to create an IP checklist for our business plans. After learning more about this case, I have been able to think of and add many more legal items to my IP checklist that I need to make sure are taken care of before my business goes live.

In this podcast, Anup Malani and Jonathan Masur discussed how the pricing of your innovations and its patents directly relate to one another. During my studies for my bachelor’s degree I took 2 or 3 economics class, therefore their reference to profits, demand curves, and surplus really resonated with me. One term that they used a lot was “patent pools”. Malani and Masur taught me that patent pools allow you to partake in two part pricing when registering patents which gives you the opportunity to buy a bundle of patents (or any other product or service for that matter) for flat rate, and then pay per patent for additional ones that supersede that amount in your bundle. When starting up my non-profit organization, I will be able to use this theory when it comes to applying patents to innovations that my employees, my students, or me come up with. It will allow us to remain creative without the worry of our competition stealing our ideas.

This podcast was my favorite of them all! It gave me a new respect for TMZ. Yes, TMZ the celebrity gossip TV show and website! Did you know that Harvey Levin, the creator and executive producer of TMZ is a lawyer? He went to the University of Chicago Law School. I was extremely shocked to learn this information. Throughout the podcast he discussed the importance of maintaining a line of privacy with celebrities and their personal lives. Now this may seem like an oxymoron due to the fact that all TMZ does is dive right into the personal lives of celebrities, but he gave several examples of how he chose not to publicize certain information that TMZ received about celebrities. This goes to show that even people whose explicit jobs are to report celebrity gossip still know how to maintain a level of professional and ethical behavior. My goal for Moguls in the Making is to have celebrities come in to mentor and teach my students. We all know that some celebrity lifestyles are not all rated PG13, but it is my job to make sure that my students know how to properly handle situations if they see a celebrity partaking in an act that they know is not right. It is not the job of the student to spread rumor or gossip, but they should know that the faculty is the place to vent about issues or things that they see and that when they talk about it with the faculty it is left there and not discussed anywhere else. This will build up a strong positive conscience and set of morals within my students that allows them to behave professionally in any situation.

The links to the podcasts that I listened to can be found below.

Tough Cookies and Heart Attacks

The True Cost of Patents

Privacy and the Media

Happy Listening!!

~*Love, Peace, & Radio*~