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Petrella's Lawyers Are Unusual Duo

By Jan Wolfe

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.

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