Siegel on Entertainment Law
Siegel on Entertainment Law
November 6, 2018
8:00 AM – 12:30 PM
RLL 4th Floor Faculty Lounge
To register for this event, please click here.
Pending Approval: 3.00 CLEs
$25.00 Registration Fee
Faculty and Students are Free
Program Schedule
8:00 AM Light Refreshments
8:30 AM - 8:45 AM Welcome and Introductions
8:45 AM – 10:15 AM Personal Management and Music Publishing
10:15 AM – 10:45 AM Networking Break
10:45 AM – 11:15 AM Art Exhibitions
11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Entertainment on the Internet
12:15 PM – 12:30 PM Closing Discussion and Questions
About the Program
Typically the first contract into which an artist will enter in the course of his or her career, the personal management agreement is often also the most important professional, and career-related personal, relationship that an artist will have. The respective obligations of the manager and artist under such agreements, the economic relationship between the parties and the creative considerations and controls that need to be addressed in this critical relationship will be discussed. In addition, the important distinctions between the laws of New York and California regarding the rights and limitations a manager has (and the expectations an artist may have) when it comes to procuring employment for the artist will be analyzed.
Recording artists, A&R people, songwriters and anyone else who knows the music business speak the adage: “it all starts with the song.” Without the song, there is no record. Bing Crosby could not have recorded “White Christmas” without Irving Berlin’s song. Music publishing, in a nutshell, is the business of creation, ownership, exploitation and monetization of songs. This presentation covers briefly the legal underpinning of the music publishing business (copyright law), the contractual relationships among songwriters, music publishers and third party users of music, income sources and forthcoming major changes in the basic business model resulting from new legislation - The Music Modernization Act.
Speaker Bios
Mark Tratos
Mark G. Tratos is the founding Shareholder of the firm's Las Vegas office, home of the largest group of entertainment attorneys in Nevada. Previously, he was the Co-Founder of the firm of Quirk & Tratos.
Mark focuses his practice on a variety of entertainment, intellectual property and litigation matters. He represents artists and performers, resort, hotel and casino entities in federal court litigation involving trademark, copyrights, domain names, rights of publicity and privacy law for known casino brands. He represents many of the largest resorts in the world on brand development and protection strategies, enforcement and infringement litigation.
Mark has represented numerous artists and performers, including the estates of Orson Welles, Anthony Quinn; performers Teller, Ozzy Osbourne, David Copperfield, Val Valentino and The Masked Magician; visual artists Ronnie Cutrone, Deny Dent, Vladamir Kush, Tim Bavington and Peter Lik; and athletes including world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.
In keeping with the firm's commitment to community involvement, Mark has been a member of the adjunct faculty of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for more than 25 years. He currently teaches entertainment law, rights of publicity and privacy law, and the law of cyberspace at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law; the business of entertainment at UNLV's hotel college; and entertainment and fine arts law at the College of Fine and Performing Arts. Mark is the author of the New York Bar Association's Entertainment Treatise, chapters on "The Evolution of Entertainment on the Internet," "The Evolution of Entertainment Production, Distribution, Ownership and Control in the Digital Age," and "Exhibitions: Art and Artifacts Exhibits as an Expansion of the Entertainment Industry." He is Past Chair for the Board of Trustees of the National Judicial College and is the Chairman of the Board of Visitors for Lewis & Clark Law School, and Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of Lewis & Clark College. He serves as Director for the Board of the Smith Center for Performing Arts and Chairman of the Center’s Board of Advisors.
Bethany Rabe
Bethany Rabe focuses her practice on entertainment-related litigation, with particular interest in copyright, trademark, right of publicity, defamation, and Internet matters, as well as appellate litigation and brand management.
Michael Perlstein
Michael J. Perlstein is a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Fischbach, Perlstein, and Lieberman & Almond LLP. For over forty years his practice has focused on music publishing, recording industry and related copyright and contractual matters. He represents leading artists, songwriters, publishers, producers and estates of deceased authors and recording artists. A major emphasis of his practice involves representation of buyers and sellers of compositions and master catalogs. He is a member of the California, New York and Illinois bars.
He is the author of the following articles:
The chapter entitled Music Publishing in Entertainment Law, Editions 1, 2 and 3 (1989, 1996 and 2004), published by the New York State Bar Association;
In re Marriage of Worth – Copyright as Community Property: Questions about Worth are More Than Merely Trivial, published in the April 1988 Entertainment Law Reporter;
Contracts with Kids: A Limited Discussion of Entertainment Industry Contracts Involving Minors Under California Law, published in the 1992-93 Entertainment Publishing and the Arts Handbook; A Cue Sheet Primer, published in the March 2000 edition of The Score, The Journal of the Society of Composers and Lyricists; Some Aspects of United States Music Publishing Agreements: The Exclusive Term Co-publishing Agreement and the Minimum Delivery Commitment, published in the January, 2001 Journal of the International Association of Entertainment Lawyers; A Primer on Termination Rights, published in the syllabi of the 2007 and 2008 Entertainment and Sports Law Section of the Texas State Bar Association convention;
She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft: When Copyright Collides with Community Property, published in the syllabus of the 2008 Entertainment and Sports Law section of the Texas State Bar Association convention.
He is a former Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles teaching the course on music publishing.
He serves a trustee and officer of the Los Angeles Copyright Society and was co-chair of the program committee for the February 2008 joint meeting of the Copyright Society of the USA and Los Angeles Copyright Society.
Mr. Perlstein is a frequent speaker, panelist and moderator on copyright issues relating to the music industry, with presentations at UCLA Extension classes, the California Copyright Conference, the Association of Independent Music Publishers, the Copyright Society of the South, the Beverly Hills Bar Association and the Entertainment and Sports Law Section of the Texas State Bar Association.
Howard Siegel
Howard Siegel was senior partner in Pryor Cashman's Entertainment Group until his retirement in 2016. He has more than 40 years’ experience in representing clients in all aspects of the entertainment business, with a particular emphasis on the music industry, during which time he has served as counsel to many of the industry’s most prominent recording artists, songwriters, producers, managers, and executives. He gained a national reputation representing artists such as Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman, Carly Simon, the Backstreet Boys, Steven VanZandt, Todd Rundgren, Jim Steinman and many others. As counsel to several American Idol finalists and winners, Mr. Siegel negotiated a number of significant licensing, publishing and other media-related entertainment agreements.