While the Internet and digital technologies have wreaked havoc on copyright law over the last decade, many of the same fundamental legal principles still apply to publishing and writing law. At the end of the day, attorneys still need to help writers to make money from the intellectual property that they create. This requires seeing down the road with vision and realizing that decisions made today have major future implications for the writer’s project and legal rights. The attorney should have one mantra when counseling writers – own everything, the entire “bundle of rights.”
In this broad overview of writing and publishing law, Los Angeles attorney Ivan Hoffman covers many of the key issues faced by writers in the publishing industry. The main topics discussed include the relationship between contracts & copyright, the interplay of Internet & copyright law, the legal nuances of book publishing contracts, the relationship of trademark law and writing & publishing law, authors & contributors and the Internet & children (COPPA). Further topics addressed in this CLE course include focusing on the contract, registering copyrights, works made for hire, cover art & illustrations, joint works & authors, the fair use defense to copyright infringement, termination of transfers, the publisher/author relationship, submission agreements, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Communications Decency Act (CDA), website designers & developers, permission forms & third party materials, failure to publish provisions, royalty provisions, the author’s warranties & indemnities, owned & controlled provisions, older contracts, what trademark law protects, ghost writers, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) and operating with vision.
Ivan Hoffman has practiced law for over forty years. Based in Los Angeles, California, he concentrates his practice on Entertainment Law, Publishing & Writing Law, Copyrights, Trademarks, Web Design Law, Internet Law, Sports Law and Intellectual Property Law. Mr. Hoffman practices preventative law and he tries to advise clients in this regard so that they may possibly be able to avoid the very significant costs and fees of remedial law. Preventative law is about doing proactive, effective and thorough legal work in a manner that seeks to avoid problems that can arise later on. Preventative law is when rights are well documented, agreements are well drafted and when a longer-term view is used. Please visit Mr. Hoffman’s website for more information and resources (http://www.ivanhoffman.com/).