Loyalty is built on the value/price equation. It says: A client will stay loyal to you as long as he perceives the value of the services he receives to be greater than the fee he pays. Other things are important, too, but if you don't deliver value that is greater than your fee, you will never earn your client's loyalty.
You will find spirited debates in the conference rooms of many law firms about the criticality of employing Client Relationship Management (CRM) processes and technology to better deliver legal services. The promise of CRM is enticing, but it is sometimes misunderstood and under managed.
When it comes to marketing and client development, law firms with multiple offices or with lawyers who practice in different practice groups face challenges that are substantially different from the issues that single office firms or specialized boutiques must handle. This is true whether the larger firm has only a few practice groups or is a full service general practice firm as well as whether its offices are located in one state, across the same region of the United States, spread widely throughout the U.S., or both here and overseas.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit decided that, under 17 U.S.C. Sec. 504(c), statutory copyright damages for a single defendant should be based on the amount of works infringed, rather than the amount of infringements of those works. Venegas-Hernandez v. Sonolux Records.
Finding talent and being rewarded for it are common music industry pursuits. After Carl Jackson discovered singer/songwriter Bobbie Cryner while she was waitressing at a Tennessee restaurant, he negotiated an October 1991 songwriting deal for Cryner with the California-based Famous Music Corp., to whom Jackson was also signed. Though Jackson wasn't a contractual party to the Cryner/ Famous Music agreement, with Cryner's knowledge he entered into a separate contract the same day with Famous Music for him to co-produce Cryner and to re-assign him a 50% of the copyrights that Cryner transferred to Famous Music. In 1993, Bobbie Cryner executed a copyright assignment for Famous Music to file with the U.S. Copyright Office.
Vicarious liability is applicable in most areas of tort law. As the U.S. Supreme Court stated in an opinion early last year, "traditional vicarious liability rules ordinarily make principals or employers vicariously liable for acts of their agents or employees in the scope of their authority or employment." Meyer v. Holley, 537 U.S. 280, 283 (2003).
In the area of copyright law, however, courts have developed an expanded form of vicarious liability that has been applied without regard for traditional limits on vicarious liability.
The question remains, however, whether this expanded application of vicarious liability comports with Supreme Court precedent.
In 2003, the video-game industry generated $7 billion in sales. The continued success of this industry has created opportunities for law firms to expand their services into the video-game field. For example, being on top of developments in the video-game industry is a priority for San Francisco's Morrison & Foerster. The firm recently formalized a 25-lawyer video-game practice in response to its ever-increasing business with the industry.
Recently filed cases in entertainment law, straight from the steps of the Los Angeles Superior Court.
