Areas of Practice

Kate Spelman has more than 30 years of experience providing strategic advice, design and implementation counsel for large, mid-sized and startup companies on copyright, trademark, trade secret and patent matters, both nationally and internationally, and has a special focus on media, licensing and mass digitization issues. Kate advises and counsels clients on the development, production, sale and defense of work related to emerging content distribution strategies and challenges, special issues in news reporting including repurposing content, and firewall and paywall configuration in light of changes in the fair use defense.

Kate is a frequent speaker on the progress of emerging copyright and digital publishing issues, and has advised authors, nonprofit and for-profit publishers, and internet service providers on the new language and provisions of the changed, global distribution environment. She has represented large digital publishing companies in international distribution agreements as well as represented developers and designers who are building and launching tools for online transmissions, storytelling, expression and art.

Additionally, Kate has experience assisting clients with Open Source licensing issues, including Open Source integrated licenses, audits, mergers and acquisitions due diligence, and compliance negotiations. Kate also helps clients design independent holding companies in the U.S. and in offshore intellectual property asset management. She has experience with intellectual property asset audits, and has assisted companies in proactive and reactive Sarbanes-Oxley compliance reporting requirements.

Academics

• Pepperdine University (Certificate in Dispute Resolution, 1990)

• University of Wisconsin Law School (J.D., 1980)

• University of Michigan (B.A., Classics and Latin, 1976)

ROBERT CLARIDA is a partner at Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt, LLC in New York.  He has extensive experience in all aspects of copyright law and has litigated a number of high-profile copyright matters and significant appeals in several Circuits. Bob speaks and writes frequently on copyright issues, is the author of the treatise COPYRIGHT LAW DESKBOOK (BNA 2009), and co-authors the regular copyright law column in the New York Law Journal. He also teaches a seminar on emerging intellectual property issues at Columbia Law School and is the past chair of the Copyright and Literary Property Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He earned his J.D. in 1993 from Columbia University, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, after earning a Ph.D. in music composition from SUNY Stony Brook in 1987, and receiving a Fulbright fellowship to the Musicology Institute of Gothenburg University, Sweden.  He is admitted to the New York bar, and to the federal bars of the Southern, Eastern, Northern and Western Districts of New York, the Eastern District of Michigan, and to the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Seventh and Ninth Circuits.

E. Leonard Rubin is principal counsel with the law firm LRubinLaw, a firm that represents individuals and business clients worldwide.  Mr. Rubin, who concentrates his practice in copyright, trademark, defamation, trade secret, privacy and entertainment law, resigned his position a number of years ago as Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Playboy Enterprises, Inc., where he had been for 13 years, to return to private practice.  He is an arbitrator and certified mediator and has extensive experience handling negotiations, internet implications and complex litigation in the copyright, trademark, communications, publishing, computer, music, television, theatrical and motion picture areas, among others.

Mr. Rubin is a Trustee and past president of the Midwest Chapter, and has sat on the Executive Committee, of the Copyright Society of the United States.  He has written numerous articles and spoken both in this country and abroad on copyright, trademark, defamation, entertainment and data protection issues. He is a member of the Chicago, Illinois, New York State and American Bar Associations, and is admitted to practice before the Illinois and New York state courts as well as the U.S. Supreme Court and the Fifth and Seventh U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal.

Mr. Rubin is an Adjunct Professor at John Marshall Law School, teaching Entertainment Law.  He is a former Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University School of Law (Copyright Law), the University of Illinois College of Law (Entertainment Law, Copyright and New Technologies Law), and  Loyola University Law School (Advanced Copyright Law).  He is a former Trustee and Executive Committee member of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.  Mr. Rubin is a past president and Board member of Lawyers for the Creative Arts (which provides free legal help to indigent artists, authors and composers), was a Director of CBA-TV Inc., and for 35 years was the director and co-author of “Christmas Spirits,” the annual social and political musical satire show produced by the Chicago Bar Association.