Three Manatt Entertainment attorneys contributed chapters for this year’s International Association of Entertainment Lawyers book on recent developments in the music industry.
Jordan Bromley, leader of the entertainment transactions and finance group, and Naader Banki, an associate with Manatt Digital and Technology, wrote on how American copyright laws and practice affect music remixes.
They said the remix is “at best, a new spin on an existing tune, a transformative, creative moment when the remixer makes something new of something old(er). At worst, it is a derivative work concocted by a record label to breathe fresh life into a previously released work.”
John Meller, an associate with Manatt Entertainment, wrote about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and how it impacts royalty streams for performers, musicians, and master rights holders in the United States.
“Most industrialized nations in the world pay stakeholders master performance royalties wherever performance royalties are collected on compositions, including terrestrial radio (this royalty stream is known as “neighboring rights”),” he wrote. “The right in America is more limited…well, actually, non-existent.”
Read Bromley and Banki’s piece here, and read Meller’s piece here.