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Petrella's Lawyers Are Unusual Duo
Winning a judgment against a movie studio for copyright infringement is one of the toughest litigation assignments out there. But it might have become a bit easier after the victory at the U.S. Supreme Court by the unusual duo of entertainment lawyer Glen Kulik of Kulik Gottesman & Siegel in Sherman Oak, CA, and professor Stephanos Bibas of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The high court ruling, discussed in the accompanying article in this issue by Marcia Coyle, revived the copyright case in which the daughter of deceased screenwriter Frank Petrella alleged that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1980 film Raging Bull was lifted from a screenplay he wrote.
Kulik, a trial lawyer by trade, has represented Petrella from the start. Bibas, who co-leads Penn's Supreme Court clinic, jumped in to handle the oral argument before the high court on a pro bono basis. Two dozen of his students contributed to briefing in the case.
The fact that the high court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has a great deal of symbolic value to plaintiff-side copyright lawyers like Kulik. The Ninth Circuit has sided with the big Hollywood studios over the years. Because of that case law ' not to mention the resource disparity between artists and the industry ' not a single copyright case against a film or television studio in the Ninth Circuit has ended in a final judgment for the plaintiffs in more than 20 years. (Some cases have settled, though, including one Kulik brought on behalf of a screenwriter claiming credit for the award-winning film Shakespeare in Love.)
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