California

A full-service firm with a national, and global, footprint, Loeb & Loeb provides a wide array of legal services through its six offices throughout the US and two in China. In litigation specifically, the firm has deep ties to the entertainment industry. “It’s really time to take a closer look at Loeb & Loeb,” advises one contemporary. “For entertainment litigation, they are really quite dominant. They have some strong connections there, some very high-profile clients.” Another insists, “They have one of the best trust-and-estates groups in the country, and this is going to be a crazy growth area.”

     Not surprisingly, much of this is serviced by practitioners in its Los Angeles office. A team of Loeb litigators, led by partner Jim Curry, represents CBS in litigation relating to the popular daytime television program, “Judge Judy,” including defending CBS against first-of-their-kind cases involving claims that a sale of a television library should trigger a “buy-out” of the profit participant’s interest. The Loeb team also previously defended CBS against a related case where a former agent and profit participant sought a declaration that Judge Judy’s salary is too high and should not be deducted as a profit participation. Curry and his team won the case on appeal of the granting of summary judgment to CBS. “Jim Curry does a lot of work that many entertainment lawyers don’t like to do, like accounting disputes and audit claims, which is when someone is a participant in a TV show or a film and they see the accounting sheet and the film or show is underwater, so they dispute the accounting.” David Grossman is defending Paramount Pictures against the estate of Truman Capote in a lawsuit in which the estate is claims that they own the rights to the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The suit involves complex copyright questions, including questions related to the granting of rights by the Estate to Paramount. Grossman is also defending NBCUniversal, actor Gary Oldman and Working Title Group against claims of breach of implied in-fact contract and interference brought by a writer alleging that material from his working scripts about Winston Churchill ended up in the film Darkest Hour without credit or compensation.

Grossman also defended Netflix and the creators of the Netflix hit television series Stranger Things, against a copyright infringement case in which the screenwriter and producer filed suit asserting, among other claims, that the show included elements from the writer’s undeveloped screenplays and in particular that the “Shadow Monster” was based on a character the plaintiff created. LA partners John Gatti and Lauren Friedrepresent Miramax and its related licensees, including Amazon and Walmart, among others, in a suit brought by a photographer that claimed to own the rights to an iconic photograph of Uma Thurman used in a poster for the movie “Pulp Fiction,” which Miramax produced. After decades of Miramax licensing the image, the photographer claimed for the first time in his 2020 lawsuit that he owned the photograph, that Miramax had no right to exploit the photo in any way, and that Miramax and each of its licensees were liable for copyright infringement. The Loeb team successfully secured an order that the photographer was late in filing any copyright registration, thereby limiting the alleged damages. Gatti and Fried also represent singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman in a copyright-infringement case based on rapper and songwriter Nicki Minaj’s sampling of Chapman’s works without permission. On summary judgment, the district court found triable issues of fact as to whether Minaj could be held liable on Chapman’s distribution claim and set a date for trial. Minaj subsequently agreed to pay Chapman the full amount of damages sought and judgment was entered in the federal court case in Chapman’s favor for nearly half a million dollars.
     Operating from the firm’s New York office, Barry Slotnick and Tal Dickstein

are defending rapper Roddy Ricch, as well as songwriters, music publishers and the record label, against a copyright infringement suit alleging that Ricch used part of songwriter Greg Perry’s 1975 soul song “Come on Down” in Ricch’s 2019 hit “The Box.” This same pair is defending a number of individuals and entities against copyright infringement claims brought by Chris Brown involving the rights to the motion picture Down For Life.