Professor Kevin Greene Gears Up for a Busy Year of IP Activity in 2015
January 16, 2015
Thomas Jefferson School of Law Professor Kevin J. Greene, a nationally recognized scholar in the fields of Entertainment Law and Intellectual Property Law, says he is looking forward to a busy year in 2015. “Just last week, at the beginning of the new year I was interviewed on National Public Radio (“NPR”) Marketplace on copyright fair use issues regarding the film Selma. In February, I have been invited to speak on copyright topics at USD Law School in San Diego and at Fordham Law School in New York. In May, I am scheduled to speak in Seattle on rights of publicity at the Law & Society Conference. Also in May, I have been invited to moderate a forum on trademark issues in the video game context in San Diego hosted by the International Trademark Association (“INTA”). I am hoping a bunch of students will attend INTA with me. In October, I will speak on copyright issues at a conference in Anaheim, CA hosted by LatCrit, a critical theory organization.”
Also this year, Professor Greene will work with the Black Law Students Association and La Raza to produce a forum on police practices and communities of color at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law.
Greene is proud to announce that his article entitled “Idea Theft as a Hollywood Business Model” was recently selected to be published in the Hastings Journal of Science & Technology. Also, his book chapter on rap music, innovation and copyright law in a compilation book entitled “Hip-Hop and the Law: The Key Writings That Influenced the Movement” on the most influential writings in critical race theory and IP will also be published this year.
Despite producing two IP conferences at TJSL on Copyright and Visual works and IP Trolls (featuring Robin Thicke’s attorney in the “Blurred Lines” copyright case) Professor Greene says he considers 2014 an off year. “I spoke on a panel on film rights acquisition in New York with the legal head of DC comics, secured a sponsorship with San Diego Fashion Week for TJSL and was also a copyright law panelist at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas in March 2014, where I shared the stage with funk legend George Clinton.”
Professor Greene served as a copyright expert and strategist on a team of lawyers representing Mr. Clinton on a landmark copyright case involving Clinton’s iconic master sound recordings. Despite these successes Greene says, “My whole year in 2014 was colored by one thing—arguing in the 9th Circuit in Seattle in February 2014, which was great—then losing the case in July—which was devastating. Even more so because the Ninth Circuit would not hear any of the copyright arguments I devised for technical procedural reasons not of our making.”
“I always joke that I don’t have hobbies—this is what I love doing for fun,” says Professor Greene. “But all this activity comes back in some form to the classroom and our students and alums. Every presentation gets incorporated in class, and every contact is a potential contact for TJSL students. And that is much more rewarding I suspect than collecting stamps!”