Entertainment

Back to Intellectual Property


Music Law: Run Your Band's Business (Music Law: How to Run Your Band's Business)

Richard Stim

If you belong to a band and love the art of your job, but sing the blues when it comes to the business, you need Music Law. Composed by musician and lawyer Richard Stim, the book explains how to: find the right manager; buy, insure and maintain equipment; get gigs and get paid; tour on a budget; use samples; do covers legally; protect your copyright; trademark your band’s name; choose a recording studio; sell your music; manage your website; understand record contracts; deal with taxes. The best guide available for bands today, Music Law provides all the legal information and practical advice musicians need to keep from getting burned. All legal forms and agreements included, as tearouts and on CDROM.

Hollywood Dealmaking: Negotiating Talent Agreements for Film, TV and New Media

Dina Appleton, Daniel Yankelevits

Hollywood Dealmaking has become the go-to resource for new and experienced entertainment attorneys, agent trainees, business affairs executives, and creative executives. Entertainment attorneys and Hollywood insiders Dina Appleton and Daniel Yankelevits explain the negotiation techniques and strategies of entertainment dealmaking and detail the interests and roles of producers, writers, actors, directors, agents, and studio employees in crafting a deal. This new edition captures the dramatic changes over the past five years in the film and television industry landscape, with two new chapters: Reality Television details the sources of revenue, syndication possibilities, and format sales of these shows as well as the talent deals that are made and the Internet/New Media chapter delves in new digital formats such as mobile phones, game consoles, video-on-demand, and web-based apps, and explains where today's revenues are generated, where the industry is headed, and talent negotiation issues. All the ins and outs of negotiating are explained, including back ends, gross and adjusted gross profits, deferments, box office bonuses, copyrights, and much more. This easy-to-follow reference is packed with expert insights on distribution, licensing, and merchandising. The book's invaluable resource section includes definitions of lingo for acquisition agreements and employment deals, twelve ready-to-use sample contracts, and a directory of entertainment attorneys in both New York and Los Angeles. In Hollywood Dealmaking, readers will recognize the key players in the process, understand the "lingo" of crafting deals, learn how to negotiate agreements for the option and purchase of books and screenplays, be able to negotiate employment deals for all members of a film or television crew, understand payment terms and bonuses, and be able to register copyrights in scripts and other literary works.

The Pocket Lawyer for Filmmakers, Second Edition: A Legal Toolkit for Independent Producers

Thomas A. Crowell

* How can you use a state's film tax credits to fund your film? SEE PAGE 63.

* You have an idea you want to pitch to a production company; how do you safeguard your concept? SEE PAGE 77. 

* How can you fund your production with product placement? SEE PAGE 157.

* How do you get a script to popular Hollywood actors and deal with their agents? SEE PAGE 222. 

 Find quick answers to these and hundreds of other questions in this new edition of The Pocket Lawyer for Filmmakers. This no-nonsense reference provides fast answers in plain English-no law degree required! Arm yourself with the practical advice of author Thomas Crowell, a TV-producer-turned-entertainment-lawyer.

This new edition features:

* New sections on product placement, film tax credits and production incentive financing, Letters of Intent, and DIY distribution (four-walling, YouTube, Download-to-own, Amazon.com, iTunes, and Netflix)

* Updated case law

* Even more charts and graphics to help you find the information you need even more quickly.

This book is the next best thing to having an entertainment attorney on retainer!

* Avoid legal pitfalls with this quick reference guide- get real answers written in plain English for filmmakers, not for lawyers * Three books in one: a handy manual on film contracts, a step-by-step guide to critical legal issues on and off the set, and a quick reference on copyright and intellectual property issues *Revised and updated to cover YouTube, Internet distribution, webisodes, and production services agreements

It's Not the Big That Eat the Small... It's the Fast That Eat the Slow

Laurence Haughton, Jason Jennings

Why is AOL the most profitable new media company in the world, swallowing up one company after another and adding millions of new subscribers, while Prodigy and CompuServe are mere memories?

How did Hotmail vault from being a cool idea to being worth more than $400 million in the eyes of Microsoft in twenty-four months?

What transformed Charles Schwab from a company with four brokers trading stocks around a single table into the world's largest financial services firm?

Breakthrough consultants Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton reveal how the planet's most successful companies surged to the forefront of their industries and always managed to stay one step ahead of the competition.

It's Not the Big That Eat the Small...It's the Fast That Eat the Slow contains all the secrets and tactics used by the fastest business people to achieve great success In their chosen fields -- at dizzying speed.

In this engaging and informative guide you will learn how to:

  • think FAST by anticipating and spotting trends
  • make FAST decisions by applying rules and reassessing strategies
  • get to market FAST by exploiting your advantages and institutionalizing innovation
  • stay FAST by remaining flexible and keeping close to the customer

Jennings and Haughton traveled the globe and penetrated the world's fastest companies to witness the methods used by quick, dominant leaders in business ranging from retail sales to fast food, from financial services to communications. If you want to think quicker and faster all the information you need is here. You'll find lessons from the speediest international business and companies on how to become faster than anyone else in today's ever-changing business world.

Real Simple: Celebrations

Editors of Real Simple Magazine

If only it were as simple as popping open a bottle of Champagne. But as every hostess knows, life's myriad celebrations - whether they come in the form of a big holiday blow out or a small birthday party - require planning and effort to pull off. And in the midst of all that hors d'oeuvre making and centrepiece arranging, it can be easy to lose sight of what you're actually celebrating (whose birthday is it, anyway?). "Real Simple Celebrations" is filled with smart solutions to take the hassle out of entertaining. Each chapter is dedicated to a different occasion - such as Easter, New Year's Eve, a child's birthday party - and guides you every step of the way, from inviting the guests to cleaning up after they've gone. With its handy checklists, foolproof game plans, practical advice, and truly doable ideas, "Real Simple Celebrations" will make all your parties a lot easier to pull off. So, you can stay focused on what you're celebrating-and, more important, why.

The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide: A Business and Legal Sourcebook

GunnarGunnar EricksonErickson, MarkMark HalloranHalloran, HarrisHarris TulchinTulchin

In this comprehensive guidebook, three experienced entertainment lawyers tell you everything you need to know to produce and market an independent film—from the development process to deal making, financing, setting up the production, hiring directors and actors, securing location rights, acquiring music, calculating profits, digital moving making, distribution, and marketing your movie. This all-new second edition has been completed updated.

Animal Law: Cases and Materials

Bruce A. Wagman, Sonia S. Waisman, Pamela D. Frasch

The fourth edition of the premier book on animal law covers a rapidly developing field that is exponentially increasing its presence in both the public eye and on the list of desired classes for law students. In the past fifteen years, the number of animal law classes in American law schools has gone from less than ten to more than one hundred, and this casebook has been used as a model for courses internationally. Animal law is, in its simplest (and broadest) sense, a combination of statutory and decisional law in which the nature legal, social, or biological of non-human animals is an important factor. This new edition of Animal Law: Cases and Materials contains significant reorganization and updating while continuing to present a cohesive format that touches on many areas in which animals affect legal doctrines, caselaw, and legislative direction. Because animal law is not a traditional legal field, the book is largely framed according to traditional legal headings such as tort, contract, criminal, and constitutional law. Each chapter sets out cases and commentary where animal law is developing its own doctrine. In this fourth edition, the text has been updated and several chapters reorganized and revised to provide even greater clarity than in earlier editions. An important chapter on the commercial use of animals, introduced in the third edition, has been updated with more recent cases and statutory developments covering the significant areas of agriculture and biomedical research.

Clearance & Copyright: Everything You Need to Know for Film and Television

Michael C. Donaldson

Now extensively revised, updated, and expanded, "Clearance and Copyright" is the industry-standard guide to almost every conceivable rights issue that filmmakers, videomakers, and television producers might encounter: from the initial acquisition of material through the rights situations that arise during pre-production, production, post-production and release. Legalese-free, well-written, it's a must-read for all producers, directors, and writers - whether they make feature films, shorts, documentaries, television programs, music videos, or Internet content - and those who advise them. Armed with this book, you can protect yourself and your work from disastrous legal actions and save thousands of dollars in attorney fees. You can even learn how to save money by exercising your rights to use certain materials without paying anyone.

Entertainment Law in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (West Publishing))

Sheri L. Burr

A basic but comprehensive survey of entertainment law, this Nutshell gives a big picture overview of the intellectual property, contract, publicity, estate planning, and First Amendment issues that contribute to the field. Professor Burr also addresses specific legal issues that arise in the film, music, and television industries, including discussion of the rise of reality television. This Nutshell can be assigned as a secondary text to accompany any entertainment law casebook, as the primary text for a seminar, or as background information for someone requiring an overview.

Entertainment Law

Melvin Simensky, Thomas D. Selz, Robert C. Lind, Esq. Barbara A. Burnett, Charles A. Palmer, F. Jay Dougherty

This unique Entertainment Law casebook emphasizes the business aspects of the entertainment industry, especially its economic risks. Although important cases are included, the book provides numerous excerpts from trade publications, such as Variety, to teach the practical aspects of entertainment law. Such material is more interesting to read, more current, and more directly relevant to the practice of entertainment law.

The book contains a hypothetical that runs throughout, covering a fictional client pursuing deals in all branches of the entertainment industry - music, film, television, theater, book publishing and the Internet. Students are provided opportunities to develop relevant practical drafting and negotiating skills.

A separately purchased Document Supplement provides a wide selection of contracts from which to choose for class discussion, and an abundance of material from which instructors can devise numerous hypotheticals in addition to the ones provided in the casebook.

Back to Intellectual Property