Richard’s areas of practice within the computer and entertainment industries include copyright, trademark, trade secret, publishing, advertising, unfair competition, arts and general business law. Richard frequently practices before the United States Copyright Office in registration and recordation matters and before the United States Patent and Trademark Office in registration, opposition and cancellation actions. Richard has handled the registration of all types of subject matter including computer programs subject to litigation or containing trade secrets. Richard also consults to many law firms on copyright and trademark matters; he has acted as an expert witness for other attorneys engaged in copyright litigation. Richard has directed a wide variety of transactions including the acquisition, sale or publishing of computer software (including appropriate assignments and source code escrows), the licensing of all types of intellectual properties, employment agreements within the computer and entertainment industries, the acquisition of manuscripts and life story rights for motion pictures and television including attendant options and appropriate assignments, screen writer agreements, publishing agreements for fiction and non-fiction, agreements for publication of articles in magazines, advertising agency agreements, graphic artists agreements, synchronization and master use licenses, recording contracts, music publishing, music promotion, transfers of intellectual property (exclusive, nonexclusive and as security for loans) and advisory letters to clients outlining legal strategies with an emphasis on preventive law. Richard frequently lectures on these subjects.
Trade Secrets
Intellectual Property
Unfair Competition
Richard is former Editor-in-Chief of Entertainment and Sports Lawyer, published by the American Bar Association, reaching 6,000 attorneys and law libraries in the United States and abroad, and now acts as Publications Chair for the Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries. In 1996 Richard was appointed to the American Bar Association Technology Council which assists the ABA Coordinating Commission on Legal Technology. Since 1987 Richard has edited over one hundred articles for substance, content and style while making editorial, budget and art decisions affecting Entertainment and Sports Lawyer. In his capacity as Editor-in-Chief Richard serves on the Governing Committee of the Forum Committee on the Entertainment and Sports In dustries and is an elected Governing Committee member in his own right. In 1993-94 Richard supervised the redesign of Entertainment and Sports Lawyer and is currently editing an anthology of the collected works of Entertainment and Sports Lawyer scheduled for publication in 1996. In 1994 Richard organized the plenary session for the Forum Committee’s annual meeting covering multimedia law. Richard is also editing Jim Talbott’s new book on multimedia law and practice to be published by Clark Boardman Callaghan. To date, Richard has authored over ten articles on various aspects of copyright and trademark law, publishing, entertainment, unfair competition and the law of ideas as well as book reviews. After publication of his highly acclaimed article on the colorization of black and white motion pictures, “A Coat of Paint on the Past? Impediments to Distribution of Colorized Black and White Motion Pictures,” Richard presented a paper on that topic before the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. His articles have appeared in The Entertainment and Sports Lawyer, the Entertainment Law Reporter, The Los Angeles Daily Journal and Entertainment, Publishing and the Arts Handbook.
A new client approached our firm faced with a happy problem. They were an early manufacturer of liquids for vaping. The happy problem? They were growing so fast that they had to add on significant additional employees to their team. Normally this would not be an issue as their current employees were more like family members and treated as such. But with growth comes new, yet solvable, problems. The client required not just a significant upgrade to their employment agreements, but those agreements had to cover significant trade secrets. If you’re thinking Coca-Cola and the recipe to the famous drink, the client was presented with the same problem. Our law firm upgraded their employment agreements to include trade secret issues and developed a trade secrets program to protect their vaping liquids recipes—everything from protocols for handling recipes to storage when the line was not manufacturing product. Problem solved!