SERIES: Making the Law Work for Artists

As artists, your priority is creativity. Finding the muse, penning the song, drafting the novel, sculpting the clay. And while it would be unmistakably wonderful if your creative side never had to meddle in the business and legal realm, modern-day dynamic makes it essential for successful artists to understand more than their craft. In this seminar series, learn the benefits of business and how the law can work to protect your art. Through insightful seminars, you'll learn everything you always needed to know but never cared to ask.  

Protecting Your Creativity: Estate Planning for Artists (CLE Credit Available)
Thursday, October, 13, 2009 | 5:30-7:30 PM
Location: Nashville Children's Theatre
Presented by : Stacey Schlitz of Drescher & Sharp, P.C.

Whether you are at the "starving artist" stage in your career, or you have already begun to accumulate creative property, assets, and wealth, this course will provide you with the basics of estate planning. If you are entering into a life change, such as marriage, same-sex union, divorce, beginning a family, or planning for retirement, you should ensure that your creative property and creative rights, as well as your loved ones, are protected. This seminar will discuss the basics of prenuptial agreements, wills, trusts, living wills, powers of attorney, and the additional planning that is necessary to protect your intellectual property, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, grand rights, merchandising rights, musical and literary compositions, master recordings, recording contract rights, publishing contract rights, and performance rights.

Stacey Schlitz, estate planning and entertainment attorney from the law firm of Drescher & Sharp, PC, provides advice and planning to musicians, artists, and entertainers. She graduated from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 2003 and received her LL.M. in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center in 2004.
 

Intellectual Property for Craft Artists (CLE Credit Available)
Saturday, October 17, 2009 | 2:00-3:30 PM
Location: Watkins College of Art, Design & Film (2298 Rosa Parks Blvd.)
Presented by: Jon Rose of Bradley, Arant, Boult and Cummings

In Marketing Crafts and Visual Arts it’s written that, “The real challenge for artisans and visual artists (painters, sculptors and photographers) is not just to produce and market winning new products that cater to changing consumer tastes, but also to prevent — or, if unable to prevent, to deal effectively with — unfair competition or theft of their creative ideas.” This seminar, led by attorney Jon Rose, is created specifically to help familiarize craft artists with trademark, copyright, patent and other intellectual property concepts – ultimately making the “real challenge” for artisans real easy to navigate.

Jon Rose is an attorney with Bradley, Arant, Boult & Cummings. A graduate of Harvard’s Law School, Jon focuses his practice on intellectual property litigation and other commercial litigation.
 

The Debate Over the New Royalty for Performers (CLE Credit Available)
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 | 5:30-7:00 PMLocation: Bradley, Arant, Boult, Cummings (1600 Division Street, Suite 700)
Presented by Sam Reed of Jim Cooper's Office
 

The fight for a performance right in a sound recording that is currently being debated in Congress is the biggest legislative copyright fight in decades. Is this merely an attempted bailout for the recording industry and an irrational label response to their dramatic drop in revenues? Or are performance rights more about a fundamental fairness to US artists based upon the theory that they should be paid for producing something of value? Find out the very latest on this hot-button issue.

Sam Reed currently serves as the staff attorney for Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN), with a specific focus on intellectual property, music and entertainment issues. Before joining Cooper’s office, Reed worked as a lawyer at the Nashville-based firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis.