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Katzenberg’s DreamWorks New Media Deal — Was It Fair? – Forbes
Category: News | Monday, July 11th, 2016 | Comments Off on Katzenberg’s DreamWorks New Media Deal — Was It Fair? – Forbes
Bryan Sullivan’s article “Katzenberg’s DreamWorks New Media Deal — Was It Fair?” appeared in Forbes on July 11, 2016. The article discusses the class-action lawsuit brought by minority shareholders against Jeffrey Katzenberg regarding his role in the Comcast-DreamWorks merger. According to Bryan, plaintiffs must be able to prove that Katzenberg’s personal deal and the acquisition were both unreasonable in order for this case to have any worthwhile outcome. Minority shareholder lawsuits against the majority are often expensive and very difficult to prove, especially in this case given Katzenberg’s iconic Hollywood status as a pioneer in animation and co-founder of DreamWorks.
To read the full article, click here.
Peter Scott Successfully Wins Appeal of Trial Court Order on Behalf of Client
Category: News, Results | Wednesday, June 15th, 2016 | Comments Off on Peter Scott Successfully Wins Appeal of Trial Court Order on Behalf of Client
In Manapat v. Hoffman, et al., LASC Case No. LC101642, Appellate Case No. B268328, the firm represented respondents/defendants in an appeal of a trial court order dismissing the entire case on demurrer. Our clients prevailed completely on appeal.
Fashion lawyers have seen textile copyright litigation increase over the past five years – Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal
Category: News | Friday, June 10th, 2016 | Comments Off on Fashion lawyers have seen textile copyright litigation increase over the past five years – Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal
Fashion lawyers have seen textile copyright litigation increase over the past five years
By Amanda Schallert
Plaintiffs’ firms continue to score big in textile copyright infringement suits in the Central District courts in the first half of 2016, seeing a wider variety of plaintiffs and high judgments as corporate retailers ramp up efforts to cover their bases.
Fashion lawyers point to the successes of Venice-based Doniger/Burroughs as the reason textile copyright litigation has increased over the past five years, due to the firm’s six-figure jury verdicts and the sheer number of complaints it churns out.
Other small firms have also started appearing in the arena, following a lucrative trend, and attorneys on both sides indicate it’s becoming more important for manufacturers to buy from reputable fabric vendors and have aggressive indemnification provisions.
Doniger/Burroughs had its most recent public win in May when it reached a $413,000 settlement against Urban Outfitters, Inc., Anthropologie and The TJX Companies, Inc. during trial. Classical Silk Inc v. Dolan Group, Inc. et al, CV14-9224 (C.D. Cal., filed Dec. 1, 2014)
And the firm has been busy the past month, filing at least 15 new cases against retailers, accusing them of selling clothing that infringed on client copyrights, said Stephen M. Doniger.
Textile lawsuits migrated with the fashion industry from New York City to L.A. Last year about $43 billion in apparel imports were set to enter the city’s ports, well-situated nearer to Asia, according to the CIT Group Inc.’s 2016 L.A. Area Fashion Industry Profile.
The Central District of California is also prime for copyright litigation in general. From 2011 to 2015, it saw about 2,500 cases, or 26 percent of U.S. copyright litigation, according to a Lex Machina report from last August.
Of those cases, 417 came from four textile manufacturers represented by Doniger/Burroughs, namely, Star Fabrics, Inc., Unicolors, L.A. Printex Industries Inc. and United Fabrics. Those four companies have yet to show clear signs of diminishing caseload in 2016, said Brian C. Howard, legal data scientist and director of analytics services at Lex Machina.
For example, from the start of 2016 to the end of May, Star Fabrics has filed 34 suits. In 2015, the company filed 80 and in 2014 it filed 56, so it’s still operating at a high level compared to some previous years, Howard said.
Big retailers such as Ross and TJX saw the most litigation from 2011 to 2015, according to the report. Ross has had 30 cases this year and 61 last year, Howard said.
There’s definitely merit to many of the cases, said Robert A. Darwell, a Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP partner and defense counsel.
“On the other hand, given all of the decades and centuries of people wearing clothes, there’s kind of only so many ways that you can do animal prints or a leopard print or a zebra type of pattern,” Darwell said.
The Copyright Act requires a work to be sufficiently original. So, while a simple geometric shape would not be entitled to protection, a combination or arrangement of unprotectable elements in a textile could constitute a protected design.
For its part, Doniger/Burroughs has prompted more litigation by showing that it pays to sue. In November 2014, a jury awarded Novelty Textile, Inc. $650,000 after it sued Hot Shot HK and Wet Seal, accusing them of sampling a fabric design and then copying it and reproducing it through a Chinese manufacturer. The retail sales in the case were less than $200,000. Doniger/Burroughs and another recurring L.A. plaintiffs’ firm, Jeong and Likens LC, represented Novelty, and the Adli Law Group PC in L.A. represented Wet Seal. Novelty Textile Inc v. The Wet Seal Inc et al, CV13-5527, (C.D. Cal., filed July 31, 2013)
“Once that one hit, people were like ‘Wow, that’s a big number,'” said Stephen Y. Ma, an Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae LLP partner and defense counsel.
Doniger/Burroughs has been filing fewer claims so far this year, but said the number of clients they serve has gone up from about five in 2009 to more than 20 now.
There’s some consensus among defense counsel that 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Central District case law favors plaintiffs in damages and copyright registration disputes. In these lawsuits, attorney fees can also run from $200,000 to $400,000, lawyers said.
F”Copyright favors the copyright claimant, particularly in fashion cases … But defendants do have a number of defenses at their disposal to obtain outright dismissal or limit exposure and position the case for settlement,” David Martinez, co-chair of the retail industry practice group at Robins Kaplan LLP and defense counsel, said in an email.
For example, Martinez in April won a motion for summary judgment for a women’s apparel retailer accused of copying a chevron print textile design. In contrast with the L.A. Printex case, where registration was considered a minor technical error, the court found Urban’s copyright registration invalid because it had published parts of its “unpublished collection” while trying to sell them before the registration. Urban Textile, Inc v. The Cato Corporation et al, CV14-6967 (C.D. Cal., filed Sept. 5, 2014)
California firms that don’t seem to be significantly building their fashion law practices, but some companies are imposing broader indemnification provisions in vendor contracts and asking more questions when vendors produce textiles without hiring any designers, several attorneys said.
It’s difficult for defendants to figure out what has been copyrighted since no database tracks it, said Early Sullivan partner and defense counsel Sophia Lau.
“Retailers rely on their vendor and the indemnification language. It’s hard to know the entire pedigree, and a lot of these fabrics are sourced from overseas,” said Matthew L. Seror, senior counsel of Buchalter Nemer’s litigation group.
Additionally, an indemnity provision may only be as good as its enforcement, and not all defendants are willing to go abroad to hold a manufacturer to a contract, Seror said. Given the price point fabric is sold at and the expense of settling a lawsuit, it wouldn’t be surprising if some plaintiffs use litigation to subsidize business, he added.
Doniger/Burroughs, however, has a different take as it said it repeatedly encounters the same offenders.
“What that shows us is that these infringers see these lawsuits as a cost of doing business,” Scott A. Burroughs said. Instead of hiring artists, “they’d rather go out and look at what is popular and copy those designs.”
“If you don’t know what the providence of the artwork you’re working with is, caveat emptor,” Doniger said.
Often, wholesalers and retailers will settle or pay some sort of license fee to avoid the hassle of a lawsuit, Darwell said.
And until there’s a significant defense-side ruling, many retailers are going to keep settling, Ma said, so new law defining infringement and the scope of damages could be slow making it to the books.
The parties in many textile copyright lawsuits can benefit from arbitration and early settlement, said Margaret A. Nagle of JAMS in a JAMS article. Nagle has presided over hundreds of these cases in the Central District.
“The longer it goes, the more costly it’ll be to defend. ADR really is beneficial to curb litigation costs, which are often very substantial in these cases,” Nagle said in the JAMS article. “If you’re potentially picking up two attorneys’ fees, it behooves you to get a handle on how exposed you are as early as possible through early neutral evaluation. You can agree to limited discovery, and perhaps you can settle. You then avoid a doubling down of cost. To me, any action which has the specter of attorneys’ fees is an action that you should look at ADR pretty early.”
How To Finance An Independent Film – Forbes
Category: News | Thursday, June 9th, 2016 | Comments Off on How To Finance An Independent Film – Forbes
Bryan Sullivan’s Forbes article “How To Finance An Independent Film” explains the crucial role raising money plays when producing an independent film and highlights ways to secure funding via equity, pre-sales, bridge financing, tax credits, crowdfunding, and deferred payments. According to Bryan, the key to a capital raise is to present as complete a package as possible including all relevant, legally airtight attachments; a fleshed out budget; and one person to lend gravitas to the film.
The full article can be found here.
Devin McRae Included in Daily Journal’s “Top 40 Under 40”
Category: Awards | Wednesday, May 18th, 2016 | Comments Off on Devin McRae Included in Daily Journal’s “Top 40 Under 40”
Devin McRae was recently named to the 2016 “40 Under 40” list published by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal, California’s premier legal publication. Published on May 18, 2016, the annual list recognizes leading California attorneys under the age of 40 who have demonstrated exceptional legal ability in their practice areas.
The full Daily Journal article and interview with Devin can be found below.
As a cast member of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” Shannen Doherty might have mastered high school drama; but for drama in the courtroom, she’s turned to McRae.
McRae’s representing the actress in a lawsuit against her former business management firm, Tanner Mainstain Glynn & Johnson LLP, for allegedly failing to pay her medical insurance premiums. Doherty was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, requiring a mastectomy and chemotherapy that she contends could have been avoided through early detection had the firm not caused a lapse in insurance coverage. Shannen Doherty v. Tanner Mainstain Glynn & Johnson, LLP, BC591881 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Aug. 19, 2015)
The defendants have further complicated the lawsuit by taking untenable positions on routine matters concerning pleadings and discovery, McRae said, which have been repeatedly corrected by the court after McRae was forced to file, and win, motions that would ordinarily be resolved by stipulation or minimal compliance with the discovery rules.
“When defendants make delay and obstruction their primary strategy like this, it usually reflects an inability to defend on the merits,” McRae said.
He previously butted heads with Tanner Mainstain in 2014 while representing Randall C. James, co-founder of James Levy Management, in a lawsuit against his former partner Miles D. Levy and then-Tanner Mainstain partner Steven Blatt. Randall C. James et al. v. Miles D. Levy et al., BC543109 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Apr. 14 2014)
Levy told James their client, actor James Franco, no longer wanted to pay the company’s 15 percent commission, requesting 10 percent instead, according to the complaint. James acquiesced, but later found that Levy and Blatt, Franco’s former financial adviser, had conspired to divert the 5 percent difference to a shell corporation. The case settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
McRae is representing plaintiffs in a class action potentially involving more than 4,000 security guards allegedly recruited to go to Iraq under false promises of a fixed salary based on a 6-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day schedule. The complaint states the defendants are private defense contractors who knew the putative class members would be forced to work much longer hours without additional compensation. Risinger v. SOC LLC et al., 12-CV63 (D. Nev., filed Jan. 13, 2012)
Though the plaintiffs aren’t McRae’s typical Hollywood clients, the alleged manner in which they’ve been wronged is ultimately similar, he said. McRae approaches each case with fluidity in mind, adjusting his style to fit the audience and his client’s objectives.
“Every case presents a problem to solve,” he said, “and you’ve got to figure out what the client hopes to achieve, and design and formulate a plan to and execute it in a cost-efficient manner.”
– Steven Crighton
Devin McRae Speaks to The Wrap on Possible Litigation Between Prince Estate, National Enquirer
Category: News | Friday, April 29th, 2016 | Comments Off on Devin McRae Speaks to The Wrap on Possible Litigation Between Prince Estate, National Enquirer
Devin McRae was quoted in Brian Flood’s The Wrap article “Can Prince’s Estate Sue the National Enquirer for Saying He Had AIDS?” The piece discusses the possible legal recourse Prince’s estate has regarding the National Enquirer’s front page story alleging the artist died from the disease. According to Devin, a case for libel would be difficult, as the estate would have to prove that the Enquirer’s story had a negative effect on its assets.
“The civil justice system doesn’t always provide recourse for something, that sensibly ought to have some sort of remedy,” Devin said. “If the Enquirer’s report turns out to be false, then sometimes the adverse publicity from that itself would be recourse. It would diminish the reputation of the Enquirer.”
To read the rest of Devin’s comments in The Wrap, click here.
Early Sullivan Obtains Summary Judgment on Behalf of Afkarian
Category: News, Results | Friday, April 8th, 2016 | Comments Off on Early Sullivan Obtains Summary Judgment on Behalf of Afkarian
The firm obtained summary judgment for client Afkarian in Wells Fargo v. Afkarian, et al., Case No. 37-2014-00075037-CU-OR-CTL, San Diego Superior Court; Judge Judith Hayes, a case brought by Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo claimed to hold a $1.2 million lien on Afkarian’s property.
Early Sullivan Obtains Summary Adjudication, Near Immediate Case Settlement for Nursing Home Operator
Category: News, Results | Thursday, March 31st, 2016 | Comments Off on Early Sullivan Obtains Summary Adjudication, Near Immediate Case Settlement for Nursing Home Operator
The firm represented one of the leading nursing home operators in California against 18 causes of action arising from alleged financial malfeasance and investor-related fraud in Remba v. Preimesberger, LASC Case No. BC575724, Los Angeles Superior Court, Hon. Gregory Keosian. We obtained summary adjudication on behalf of our client on 17 of the 18 causes of action, which led to near immediate settlement of the case on favorable terms.
Bryan Sullivan and Stephen Ma to Speak at Digital Hollywood 2016
Category: Events, News | Thursday, March 31st, 2016 | Comments Off on Bryan Sullivan and Stephen Ma to Speak at Digital Hollywood 2016
Bryan Sullivan and Stephen Ma will appear as panelists on “CrowdFunding Update: Exploring Innovation in the Crowdfunding Film-TV-Start-up Process” at Digital Hollywood 2016. Digital Hollywood debuted in 1994 and is widely considered to be among the leading entertainment and technology conferences in the country, with over 15,000 top executives in the film, television, music, home video, cable, telecommunications and computer industries attending the various events each year.
Steve Ma Talks to Los Angeles Times About Sony, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Category: News | Wednesday, March 16th, 2016 | Comments Off on Steve Ma Talks to Los Angeles Times About Sony, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Stephen Ma was recently quoted in Ryan Faughnder’s Los Angeles Times article “Sony is betting on love for the Beatles lasting in a new $750 million deal,” which discusses the significance of Sony’s decision to buy the Michael Jackson estate’s remaining stake of their joint venture in Sony/ATV Music Publishing. According to Stephen, the massive music catalog, containing hits from some of the industry’s most renowned artists, is worth Sony’s steep investment.
“The crown jewel, really, is the Beatles catalog,” says Stephen. “It’s a big number, but it’s one of the most prized catalogs in the world.”
To view the full article, click here.