Entertainment & New Media

Overview

Adams & Reese provides a full comprehensive playbook of legal services across both entertainment and new media, including IP, licensing, contract, and compliance services to help clients navigate the industry. Our Entertainment and New Media Practice is ranked Band 3 in Tennessee by clients in Chambers USA.

In these arenas, we assist clients with matters such as litigation, labor law, business law, trademarks, enforcement to combat counterfeiting and online imposters, patents, health care, taxes, and estate planning. Our lawyers boast over 75 years of combined experience and strength in both the law and the business of entertainment. We concentrate our work in the growing and ever-changing entertainment, intellectual property, new media, multimedia, e-commerce, social and business entrepreneur and social network practice areas.

Our clients in the entertainment industry span nearly every sector, including music, film, television, book publishing, and digital media. In the music industry, we represent independent record labels, independent music publishers, and merchandisers, as well as artists, songwriters, and producers. We work with large nonprofit ministries with a music element in helping them to protect their IP. We also represent estates and trusts associated with deceased creators. In the media industry, we work with podcasters, TV stations, newspapers, magazines, publications, production companies, social media entities, and infomercial marketers, to name a few.

DEFINING STRENGTHS

Our legal services are designed to address the full range of client needs within the entertainment and new media industries, including:

• Emerging Media: Contracts for podcasts, social media ventures, and digital media creators.
• Entertainment and Music Agreements: Record deals, license & distribution agreements, songwriter agreements, production agreements, copyright infringement (prosecution or defense), music catalog sales or acquisitions, band formation agreements, sponsorship & endorsement deals, and merchandise agreements.
• Intellectual Property: Copyright disputes, licensing, trademark and domain name protection of assets, IP enforcement and monetization, endorsement agreements, and naming rights for celebrity-branded establishments.
• Litigation: Litigation of cases related to all areas of the entertainment industry, including IP/technology, legal disputes encountered by individuals and entities in the music industry, copyright infringement litigation. 

It is important to our attorneys to know and understand their industries, and therefore, we serve as active leaders in various entertainment associations, such as the Country Music Association, Gospel Music Association, Academy of Country Music, National Academy of Recording Arts and Science, and Tennessee Art League.

We also hold leadership positions in legal organizations affiliated with entertainment, including the Nashville Entertainment and IP Lawyers American Inns of Court, Federal Communications Bar Association, Copyright Society of the South, and the Tennessee Bar, Nashville Bar, and California Bar Entertainment and Sports Law sections.