Your business objectives. There is nothing more important for a lawyer to understand when negotiating and crafting an agreement regarding intellectual property. It can mean the difference between a productive and profitable future business relationship and one that careens quickly toward calamity and litigation. This is the reason Zarin & Associates makes every effort to understand the core and mechanics of your business and what you want a prospective agreement to achieve for the business before it begins negotiating and drafting. And when we set out to prepare an agreement we always prioritize protection of your intellectual property rights so that the value of those rights are maximized and the risks to those rights are minimized. We can do this so effectively because we have litigated many intellectual property cases involving trademarks and copyrights over the years and therefore have keen insight into the issues which can make or break a future business relationship.
At the heart of every branding agreement is a trademark or a copyright. Whether they involve digital media, music, pharmaceuticals, technology, apparel, video games, mobile apps, books or celebrities, the objective of the vast majority of these agreements is to license either a trademark or copyright for the mutual benefit of the parties involved. Zarin & Associates has vast experience negotiating and drafting such agreements, which enables us to avoid the pitfalls both licensees and licensors often discover only once it’s too late and to realize the full potential value the parties intend the agreements to create.
At the heart of every music agreement is a copyright. Whether they license, assign or transfer part or all of a musical composition, a sound recording or song lyrics, such agreements are affecting the parties’ rights in copyrights. Copyrights are complex legal instruments which grant their owners a variety of different rights, including but not limited to the right to reproduce, distribute, perform and display the work and create derivative works from that work. An attorney who drafts music agreements therefore must be intimately familiar with the different legal rights imbued in a copyright and with how those rights might be modified by such agreements. Having litigated many cases involving musical composition and sound recording rights, Zarin & Associates has an exceptionally firm grasp on the nuances of copyright law as it relates to music. We have also negotiated and drafted many different types of music agreements, including but not limited to producer agreements, recording agreements, publishing and co-publishing agreements, administration agreements, artist and side-artist agreements, distribution agreements, mechanical licenses, synchronization licenses, and performance agreements, involving a variety of big and small players in the music industry, including but not limited to record producers, composers, recording artists, record labels, music publishers, recording studios and music managers.