Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing and development.

Still, we, here at Miletti Law®, feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, in order to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy & distinctive content, which looks to not only educate, but also deliver in a manner that only Miletti Law® can. Usually, this content is featured as videos that are posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6wand blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

While we are a full-service firm, we, here at Miletti Law®, continue to grow day by day and extend our reach to people of diverse cultures, creeds, and religions. As part of our expansion, we now provide legal counsel and attorney services on additional legal fields. An example is Entertainment Law, which covers an area of law involving diverse types and forms of media, such as music, film, internet & new media, advertising, and publishing, among others. The law also covers artists, musicians, actors, actresses, movie stars, brands, labels, producers, marketing teams, content managers, production companies, and pretty everyone else dealing with entertainment, directly or indirectly. Of late, boys and girls working in the entertainment industry have been reaching out to use with questions and inquiries regarding legal representation and how to navigate legal matters in their line of work. In this regard, this blog introduces you to our video titled “Entertainment Law – The Fusion of Law & Entertainment.” As usual, it is accessible through the link provided at the end of this blog or as posted on our social media platforms.

As Part I of this new L & E series, the video is technically a heads-up regarding the fusion between entertainment and law and largely an introduction to entertainment law. We aim to provide our unusually motivated® readers and viewers and guests with key information regarding what exactly entertainment law is, areas and instances where our firm can provide legal counsel, guidance, or presentation, and things that are critical to understand when they find themselves in the muck of entertainment law litigations. All in all, we are thrilled to continue dropping the knowledge bombs and keep you ahead of the game when it comes to the ABCs of entertainment law.

That being said, let us dive right in.

As mentioned above, entertainment law covers a diverse variety of professionals and individuals including, but not limited to artists, musicians, actors, actresses, movie stars, brands, labels, producers, marketing teams, content managers, and all the liaisons in between. From a quick glance, the questions and inquiries we have received from a majority of these individuals have been typically common. For instance, one of the most common question asked, particularly by performance artists and producers, regarding contract formation.

Often, artists, musicians, actors, actresses, movie stars, or other individuals that provide or produce some kind of copyrightable content or intellectual property for service, always look for information on contract formation and require guidance on how to go about it. For instance, they inquire whether oral agreements can stick, what a deal memo is, and how to enter into a business deal with a producer and what to look for, among other questions.

Contract Formation

Conveniently, contract formation is a big chunk of what we do when it comes to contracting, transactional deals, and negotiations under entertainment law. Depending on individual focus, different people in the entertainment industry want to protect their expression. For instance, artists seeks the autonomy to have their work protected for themselves, such that they can replicate this work and make royalties as much as they want, as well as enjoy the fruits of their labor perpetually. Elsewhere, the labels view things differently as they want that same enjoyment, but all the same detach from the artist. This is similar to brands, which fight to protect a certain image they want to convey and may wish to incorporate an artist into that image. Thus, they want any kind of work that the artist produces, the label, and the brand to be protected from infringement. They also wish to have that long-term protection intellectual property.

On the contrary, producers are a bit different kettle of fish all together because they are not so much focused on simply protecting the art for the sake of it. Rather, producers and the marketing arms want to protect their bottom line – their loyalties, their ability to charge, and autonomy to assert their interests and rights.

Intellectual Property

The second area we deal with under entertainment law regards intellectual property. Generally, intellectual property has always been a key pillar of the legal areas that we deal with here at Miletti Law®. In the entertainment industry, intellectual property is a very diverse and broad area of law, as it regards to freedom of expression, copyright, trademark, patents, ownership rights, and foreseeability. We will cover intellectual property in depth in our coming episodes and series.

Regulatory Issues

The third common issue we have dealt with in this industry and that people have inquired a lot about regards regulatory issues. Regulatory issues have significant implications for the entertainment industry, as opposed to other fields. For instance, Miletti Law® operates in Brooklyn, New York, and is obviously a law firm as opposed to a construction company. From our experience, we have seen lots of comments from the entertainment industry towards the New York Employment Agent Regulations (agency law is big here as it regards regulations concerning agencies). When you go to California, they have the Talents Agency Act (TAA), which is concerned with regulatory issues within the entertainment industry. The one thing that we have not encountered yet here at Miletti Law®, but we expect it will surface sooner or later, regards things like the Union Guilds and stuff like that.

In a nutshell, most of the inquiries, questions, and concerns we have received over time entails these three areas. However, contract formation has been the elephant in the room and parties find themselves in confusion regarding how to develop and go about contracts. People have also found themselves unable to balance out intellectual property and ownership rights. Furthermore, regulatory issues have had a lot of implications, especially where regulatory arms are involved, not only here in New York, but in other states as well.

We invite you to view our video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERGpOymw1no.

In the meantime, the demand concerning information about entertainment law has apparently caught our attention and, thus, we promise to drop even mightier knowledge and educational bombs to keep you informed and enlightened about these issues.

With that, stay tuned for the next installment and strive to stay #UnusuallyMotivated. In the interim, reach out to us with questions and/or comments on our website at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.