History circa 2012: The long awaited prequel to The Lord of the Rings is about to appear at a luxury movie theater near you, where you can lounge on heated leather seats and eats tiny morsels of crab for second breakfast as long as you are careful not to spill any...
World-Class Team.
World-Class Results.
Month: September 2019
Rules for Collaboration
This is a tale with a simple premise. You and a friend decide to collaborate on a screenplay. He’s got a great idea for Godzilla meets Colossus meets Gigantor meets angry mythological Greek from Wrath of the Titans, and you’ve got massive writing chops, as evidenced...
Celebrity Rights
It is undisputed that Bogart liked his Burberry trenchcoat. No, wait, I take that back. He loved his Burberry trenchcoat. In fact, he loved it so much that he actually wore the same coat in the two films that still serve as templates for how to bring hardboiled...
Helpful Trademarks
Those of you who watch Hulu on a regular basis will have noticed the ubiquitous advertising that is increasingly crowded into all the popular shows. From two or perhaps three 30-second advertisements when Hulu debuted, viewers are now subjected to five or six...
Product Placement
I remember back in 1991 I was reading American Psycho, the Bret Easton Ellis novel about the yuppie serial killer and sexual sadist who was also fixated on material luxury items – Hermes ties, Bruno Magli shoes, Corneliani suits, cashmere gloves and other fetishistic...
Creative Commons
When Larry Lessig came up with the idea for the Creative Commons, he intended to create an alternative licensing system that would solve copyright registration problems in the United States. While admirable, the idea in many respects serves to enshrine the current...