LJN Newsletters

With the number of mass/complex cases in state courts on the rise, state court litigants and jurists are recognizing the need to treat these cases differently from garden variety torts and are turning to established, but heretofore little used, state law coordination rules and procedures to manage this growing area of litigation.

The Appellate Court of Illinois decided that a license to use the trademark 'March Madness' 'to advertise, promote, and sell publications, videos, and media broadcasts' included the right to deliver on-demand video content to mobile wireless devices.

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act of 2007 is yet another example of a worldwide trend toward criminalizing the law of product liability. While the idea of establishing criminal corporate manslaughter has been discussed in the United States, it has not gained much momentum. The recent reform in the United Kingdom, however, may rekindle the efforts to criminalize product liability, especially during the course of this election year.

Artist Consultant/Unfair-Competition Claim
Insurance/Intra-Band Litigation
Royalty Complaint/Ringtone and Download Licenses
TV-Affiliation Agreements/Promotional Payments

CHARACTER RIGHTS/COPYRIGHT TERMINATION
FILM PRODUCTION/COPYRIGHT CLAIMS
FILM PRODUCTION/RIGHT-OF-PUBLICITY
RIGHTS IN BAND NAMES/TRADEMARK CLAIMS

A founding partner of one of L.A.'s few remaining litigation boutiques has jumped to Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton's Century City office. Entertainment litigator James Curry took his name off the door of White O'Connor Curry, a Century City firm that spun off of what is now Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro in an acrimonious split more than a decade ago.

A robust local film industry has kept American films on the margins in India. Foreign films account for only 3% of the market in India, compared to European countries, where American movies account for between 70% and 95% of films shown. So if the United States wants to make a point about film piracy in India, it needs to show Indians that piracy hits the market for their own films, not just those of foreign companies.

When their 15 minutes of fame came, two Santa Barbara County prosecutors didn't shy away ' one authored a book based loosely on a rape case she was handling and the other consulted on a movie about an alleged killer he was trying to bring to justice. But their foray into the entertainment world went awry in October 2006 when a state appellate panel threw both prosecutors off their cases. Joyce Dudley's novel, 'Intoxicating Agent,' hewed far too close to her real-world rape case, the court held, while Ronald Zonen shouldn't have allowed producers of the movie 'Alpha Dog' access to highly sensitive files in his sensational death-penalty case. As a result, the court ruled, keeping the prosecutors on the cases would deny both criminal defendants a fair trial.