I am asked this question all the time. My answer is registration at the Copyright Office is much better, and significantly more valuable. With apologies to my friends and colleagues who work at the WGA, I wouldn’t bother registering at the WGA East or West,...
With more songwriters administering their own catalogs, and the growth of the music publishing industry generally, songwriters and publishers should be aware of their responsibilities and opportunities for sub-publishing. It may be even more important to know the consequences of not having a subpublisher on...
Establishes Group Registration for Works on an Album of Music (“GRAM”) By Marc Jacobson, Esq. Under a new rule, the US Copyright Office will allow an applicant to register between two and twenty musical works or sound recordings, found in an album, with one application. To do...
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was enacted in response to a very difficult decision made in May 1995 by a trial court judge in Nassau County, NY. Nassau County was, and probably still is to a large degree, a bedroom community for New...
VideoAge asked me to write a few words about the loss of jobs in Hollywood due to the pandemic. The article appeared in the January 2021 issue, for this year's NATPE. The article, in both print and audio, can be found here: https://www.videoageinternational.net/2021/01/18/cover-stories/hollywoods-exodus-put-displaced-tribes-at-a-job-crossroads/...
Proposed SEC Exemptive Order makes Finders who follow new proposed rules Eligible for success-based fees. by Marc Jacobson How Filmmakers Currently Raise Capital. Often, when a filmmaker starts raising money for a film, she enters into one or more finder’s fee agreements. These agreements typically provide that...
By Marc Jacobson, Esq. When Governor Cuomo signed into law the budget for New York State on April 3, 2020, not only did New York become the first state to address federal legislation regarding the CARES Act, which provides financial relief to businesses and others as...
Help your clients make money from their works This is a big year for copyright in the United States. For the first time in 20 years, on Jan. 1, 2019, works first published in the United States in the early 20th century fell into the public...
A prominent photographer was engaged by the defendants to create images to use in a certain specified manner. At the conclusion of the term of the license agreement, the defendants continued to use the images beyond the scope of the license, and for purposes not...
Film remains a director’s medium, considering that the director will always give shape and vision to the writer’s words. Film remains a director’s medium, considering that the director will always give shape and vision to the writer’s words. Further, the director is frequently involved in the...