Kenyon & Kenyon LLP’s Copyright Practice Group includes more than 50 attorneys and paralegals with experience covering the many aspects of copyright law. Our Copyright Practice is recognized as being among the top in the nation by reputable legal referral guides, Managing Intellectual Property and The Legal 500 US. Kenyon's clients are diverse and include both industrial and commercial applications, such as SAP, AT&T, Apple Computer, BNP Paribas, British Airways, Dow Jones and HSN, and such arts and entertainment clients as the television production companies Universal Television, Studios USA, Polygram, the estate of photographer Diane Arbus, photographer Richard Avedon, Martha Stewart, the estate of mythologist/author Joseph Campbell, the respective estates of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Marvel Comics, Nelvana properties (including Babar the Elephant, Maurice Sendak’s Little Bear and Franklin the Turtle), DC Comics’ Superman and Batman, Raggedy-Ann and Andy, Mr. Bill (from Saturday Night Live), the promoters of the Woodstock and Woodstock ‘94 arts and music festivals, the US Olympic Committee, and MTV.
In addition to providing clients with day-to-day counseling regarding the registration, licensing, policing and enforcement of their copyright rights, members of the Copyright Practice excel in the complex problems which often arise due to the multiple layers of statutory US copyright laws. Areas of copyright expertise include advertising, the sale and acquisition of copyrights and property libraries, asset-based lending and purchase money financing, due diligence inquiries, moral rights, performance rights and related rights.
The preparation of copyright applications for registration and renewal is a highly technical procedure. In an effort to be time-efficient, cost-effective and accurate, the Copyright Practice administers and maintains many of our clients’ copyright dockets. This ensures that those registrations remain in order and ready to be asserted at a moment’s notice.
Because Kenyon's attorneys bring solid technology and engineering backgrounds to their legal practices, our Copyright Practice is particularly well suited to attack and solve technology-related copyright issues arising in the context of trade secrets and computer software. For example, a number of years ago, we developed an effective strategy for registering clients’ software copyrights without having to reveal sensitive trade secrets. Since then, due to the confidentiality concerns of programmers, the Copyright Office has instituted a similar procedure for registering software.
There are trademark issues that can arise in copyright contexts. Although a work might not constitute a copyright infringement, it might be a trademark violation. Many members of the Copyright Practice are also members of our Trademark Practice Group. As a consequence of this dual training, the Copyright Practice is well-versed in trademark law.
Kenyon's clients are both domestic and international. We work closely with hand-picked foreign counsel, with whom the firm enjoys proven, longstanding relationships. With their assistance, we recommend to our clients those courses of action which will best ensure the international protection of their work. The members of our Copyright Practice are particularly interested in copyright law developments and we share these developments at our monthly meetings. In addition, Kenyon's attorneys are versed in the multiple international treaties which govern copyright law protection throughout the world.