Professor Scott co-authors new text, ‘Entertainment Law on a Global Stage’

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Published by West Academic for use in law school classrooms, Entertainment Law on a Global Stage, co-authored by Penn State Law professor Geoffrey R. Scott, offers law students a comprehensive look at entertainment law, including a variety of subjects not found in other texts.

Co-authored with Mary LaFrance of the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law and Lionel Sobel of the UCLA School of Law, the book was written with future entertainment lawyers in mind and features cases from brands like Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Walt Disney, and Yahoo!, among others.

In addition to intellectual property law topics, the text includes analytical, transactional, and experiential material on some of the unique problems that arise in representing an entertainer. It covers the protection of celebrity image, privacy and reputation, entertainment industry contracts, taxation of entertainers, selling an idea, and the implications of the Internet on entertainment and the identities of artists. As a unique feature, the book also includes considerable international perspectives and analyzes how legal regimes in foreign countries impact global entertainment transactions.

Comprised of 23 chapters, Entertainment Law extensively covers the most common legal issues that entertainers encounter, including privacy rights, tax laws, likeness and reputation protection, and laws concerning the influence of friends and family related to their talent. The authors also address the business and marketing aspects of entertainment law, with five chapters that cover building a brand, selling talent to the public, and legally protecting an entertainer’s creative interests through contracts.

Scott’s teaching and scholarly interests focus on intellectual property and the intersection of the worlds of innovation and creative expression and the law. He has given particular attention to domestic and international entertainment issues with an emphasis on music, the representation of professional creative artists and athletes, and the protection of cultural properties and ethnographic treasures in both Europe and Asia.

Scott received a Fulbright Scholar award in 2004 for his research on the protection of cultural and ethnographic properties in Asia; he was a Silberman Seminars Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 2007; and he has been a visiting professor and scholar at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, and at the University of Delaware Graduate College of Marine Studies in the fields of biotechnology and intellectual property law. He has taught courses and given lectures in London and other European capitals as well as in Beijing, Kyoto, Melbourne, Seoul, Sydney, and Bergen, Norway.  He has been a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London and is a senior fellow at Monash University Faculty of Law in Melbourne, Australia.

At Penn State Law, Scott teaches Copyrights, Trademarks, Licensing of Intellectual Property, and Law of Artistic Properties and Persons and serves as director of Penn State Law’s Arts, Sports and Entertainment Law Clinic, which he founded in 1980. The issues-oriented clinic provides free services to clients, including educational information on contracts, endorsements, IP matters, licensing, and taxes and, when appropriate, legal representation.