Litigation

Features

When and how can someone else's visual content be displayed on a website without the website operator running afoul of copyright law? When and how can someone else display the website operator's visual content? A recent ruling on a popular practice at the center of these issues for entertainment and media companies may upend the current paradigm.

Features

A successful Atlanta-based hip-hop and R&B label beat back the efforts of a Los Angeles consulting firm to lay claim to hundreds of thousands of dollars and a large chunk of the company itself, when a jury declared that the record company owed the consultants less than $3,500.

Columns & Departments

Notable court filings in entertainment law.

Features

Recent cases show that appellate courts continue to wrestle with standing, jurisdiction, mootness, excusable neglect and finality, among other things. The following overview, in a series of installments, shows what the courts have been addressing during just the past three years. This first installment will cover appellate standing.

Features

In a recent case from the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, In re Paragon Offshore PLC, the bankruptcy court provided guidance on whether a post-plan effective date litigation trust's distributions constituted disbursements subject to the U.S. Trustee fee "tax."

Features

Section 365 of the Bankruptcy Code grants debtors the ability to assume or reject any executory contract or unexpired lease. Debtors must assume or reject a lease in its entirety and are not free under Section 365 to assume only favorable provisions of a lease. Courts, however, have consistently held that they will not find a multi-property master lease to be a unitary lease merely because such properties are demised in a single document.

Features

'Purdue Pharma' Looms Although four cases presenting important bankruptcy issues were teed up for the Supreme Court's consideration this term, the Court denied certiorari for each. Each of these petitions involve splits among the circuit courts of appeals, influencing choice of venue and the extent to which bankruptcy decisions are subject to meaningful appeal.

Features

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged commercial landlords to rely on various legal theories to protect their legitimate rights. As federal, state and local governments enact laws to protect tenants from evictions and/or the enforcement of personal lease guarantees, a landlord's counsel must seek avenues to press its clients' rights against any entity who may be liable for outstanding rent arrears due and owing under a commercial lease.