IP Practicum: Legal Aspects of Music

This course will involve working in a quasi-clinical mode with actual clients and complements Entertainment Law, Copyright Law and other intellectual property offerings. A prerequisite for this course will be Entertainment Law (or permission of the instructor). Enrollment will be limited to 12 students.

Methods for this course will include readings, legal research, contract drafting, classroom role enactments, client presentations and meeting and discussions. The class will work much in the way a small law firm or legal clinic would work, where the professor will play the role of firm partner or clinic director, and the students will turn in their work product to me. Students will be evaluated on legal writing exercises either legal memoranda or contracts and in client presentations and meetings.

Students will be assigned readings from Donald Passman s Everything You Need to Know About the Music Business and from other sources and will work on a variety of actual music representations and issues for several types of clients, including, recording artists, composers, small record labels and music publishers. A significant portion of the course may also involve non-music cases, such as trademark registrations, domain name issues, etc., depending on the availability of actual cases during the semester.