2024 Symposium Speakers
Panel 1: Publishing
Moderator:
Jane Ginsburg, Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law
The faculty director of Columbia’s Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts, Jane Ginsburg is a renowned authority on intellectual property law and a staunch defender of authors’ rights. She teaches and writes about copyright law, international copyright law, legal methods, statutory methods, and trademark law. She is also the author or co-author of casebooks on all five subjects, including International Copyright: U.S. and EU Perspectives (with Edouard Treppoz) and Copyright: Cases and Materials (9th edition) (with Robert A. Gorman and R. Anthony Reese). Ginsburg was a co-reporter for the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law, Intellectual Property: Principles Governing Jurisdiction, Choice of Law, and Judgments in Transnational Disputes.
Fluent in French and Italian, Ginsburg has been a visiting professor at law schools and universities in France and Italy as well as in Australia, England, Israel, and New Zealand. She is a vice president of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, a Paris-based international organization created to promote and defend authors’ rights, and president of its U.S. chapter. She is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
Speakers:
Anita Huss-Ekerhult, CEO and Secretary General, International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations
Anita Huss-Ekerhult became CEO and Secretary General of IFRRO on October 1, 2023.
Ms. Huss-Ekerhult has a law background with nearly 20 years of experience in copyright and related rights management.
Between November 2015 and September 2023, Ms. Huss-Ekerhult has worked as Counsellor in the Copyright Management Division of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a specialized agency of the United Nations in Geneva. At WIPO, Ms. Huss-Ekerhult served as team leader of the rights management team within the Copyright Management Division, with global responsibility for WIPO’s legislative and regulatory advice in the area of copyright and related rights management, as well as for capacity-building programs and technical assistance worldwide.
Prior to her work at WIPO, Ms. Huss-Ekerhult served as IFRRO Deputy Secretary General and General Counsel from 2008 until 2015. In addition to that, Ms. Huss-Ekerhult also has several years of experience at major international law firms in Belgium, Germany and Sweden.
Roy Kaufman, Managing Director of Business Development and Government Relations, Copyright Clearance Center
Roy Kaufman is Managing Director of both Business Development and Government Relations for CCC. Prior to CCC, Kaufman served as Legal Director, John Wiley and Sons, Inc. He is a member of, among other things, the Bar of the State of New York, the Author’s Guild, and the editorial board of UKSG Insights. Kaufman also advises the US Government on international trade matters through membership in International Trade Advisory Committee (ITAC) 13 – Intellectual Property and the Library of Congress’s Copyright Public Modernization Committee. He serves on the Executive Committee of the of the United States Intellectual Property Alliance (USIPA) Board. He was the founding corporate Secretary of CrossRef, and formerly chaired its legal working group. He is a Chef in the Scholarly Kitchen and has written and lectured extensively on the subjects of copyright, licensing, open access, artificial intelligence, metadata, text/data mining, new media, artists’ rights, and art law. Kaufman is Editor-in-Chief of Art Law Handbook: From Antiquities to the Internet and author of two books on publishing contract law. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and Columbia Law School.
Regan Smith, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, News/Media Alliance
Regan Smith is Senior Vice President & General Counsel at the News/Media Alliance. She is a recognized expert in intellectual property law and policy who has testified before multiple parliamentary bodies and spoken in other government, academic, and industry forums on topics including copyright, artificial intelligence, digital rights management, free expression, algorithmic regulation, and collective licensing.
Previously, Regan served as General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights at the U.S. Copyright Office. In that role, she oversaw an extensive portfolio of regulatory, litigation, and policy matters, including over 45 regulatory proceedings and several matters before the Supreme Court. She spearheaded the agency’s policy and legal work to update the licensing for musical works under the Music Modernization Act, overhauled the rulemaking regarding anticircumvention of technological measures required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and served on the administrative board determining final appeals to denials of registration applications on the thorniest questions of copyrightability.
Immediately prior to News/Media Alliance, she was Head of Public Policy in Spotify’s government affairs group, leading global intellectual property and music public policy matters. Earlier in her career, she spent several years in private practice, focusing on intellectual property, media law, First Amendment, advertising, and emerging technology issues.
Regan teaches copyright law at George Washington University. She is a trustee of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., the Chair of the ABA’s Copyright Legislation committee, and an adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Copyright Law project.
She received a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in philosophy and political science from the University of Michigan.
Matthew Stratton, Deputy General Counsel, Association of American Publishers
Matthew Stratton is Deputy General Counsel at the Association of American Publishers. In this role, Matt supports the organization’s internal and external legal needs, including litigation, public policy, and compliance matters, with a focus on copyright and First Amendment advocacy.
Prior to joining AAP, Matt served as Associate General Counsel for Elsevier, an international science and healthcare publisher with principal offices in New York, London, and Amsterdam, where from 2011 he managed on a global basis copyright and commercial litigation matters, anti-piracy enforcement strategies, and internal compliance projects, programs, and investigations. He also represented Elsevier’s interests at AAP, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), and the UK Publishers Association, where he served as Chair of the Anti-Piracy Working Group.
Matt began his career as a litigation associate in the New York office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP. He holds a law degree from the Fordham University School of Law and a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Panel 2:
Moderator:
Caitlin McGrail, Kernochan Center Fellow
Caitlin McGrail graduated magna cum laude from Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law where she was a recipient of the Best Memorandum Award, served as teaching assistant for legal writing courses, and was inducted into Order of the Coif. She was a student works editor of the Villanova Law Review, received the Volume 67 Law Review Dedication Award, and published a student note on the Visual Artists Rights Act. Prior to joining the Kernochan Center in 2024, she was in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Before law school, she worked at non-profit cultural institutions in development and administration. She graduated from Wellesley College with a bachelor’s degree in art history.
Speakers:
Benjamin Marks, Weil, Goshal & Manges LLP
Benjamin E. Marks is Head of Weil’s Intellectual Property & Media practice. His areas of concentration include copyright, trademark, music licensing, unfair competition, and First Amendment issues. Benjamin has served as lead counsel in copyright, trademark, music licensing, misappropriation, and media law cases for clients such as Getty Images, Sirius XM, Pandora Media, S&P Global, MGA Entertainment, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and the North American Concert Promoters Association, among others. For many years, he has represented the Association of American Publishers on a wide variety of matters, including those involving intellectual property, First Amendment, and antitrust issues. Benjamin also frequently represents music users such as streaming services, television stations, television networks, concert promoters, and web site operators in connection with the acquisition of, and litigation over, rights to publicly perform musical compositions and secondary liability for performances by others.
Benjamin is an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law and serves on the Advisory Board of NYU’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy. He previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Benjamin has published numerous book chapters and articles on copyright, trademark, media and entertainment law and is a frequent speaker on those issues. In addition to serving as the Head of Weil’s IP/Media Litigation practice, Benjamin is the Global Co-Chair of Weil’s Pro Bono Committee and oversees the Firm’s pro bono efforts worldwide.
Benjamin graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his J.D. from New York University, where he served as an articles editor of the New York University Law Review.
Ron Wheeler, Head of Business and Legal Affairs, Motion Picture Legal Corporation
Ron Wheeler joined the Motion Picture Legal Corporation in 2019, after almost 25 years at various divisions of the Twentieth Century Fox movie studio and its parent companies, and 10 years before that at two large Wall Street law firms.
Ron’s first gig at Fox was working in the Home Video division, where he advised on domestic and international antitrust, copyright and trademark issues, and helped develop the content protection technology for pre-recorded DVDs. That led to him being the founding head of a “Content Protection” group in the Fox Entertainment Group Legal Department. This brought together all of the disciplines involved in protecting movie and TV content from piracy in concert with the Motion Picture Association and the other member studios. Ron took the group from 4 people in 2001 to 22 people 15 years later. While working at Fox, Ron became friends with Mike Weatherley, then an MP in the UK Parliament, “IP Czar” to Prime Minister David Cameron, and later CEO of MPLC. Mike hired Ron first as a consultant, then as EVP of Business & Legal affairs and Head of Studio Relations. He was promoted to his current position at MPLC in October 2022.
Nancy Wolff, Partner, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP
Nancy Wolff is a partner at the intellectual property, media and entertainment law firm of Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP located in New York, NY, and Beverly Hills, CA. She represents a wide range of creative individuals and companies in all areas of digital media, art law, licensing, and publishing and serves as counsel to the Digital Media Licensing Association. Nancy is co-chair of the firm’s Litigation Department and co-chair of the firm’s Art Law Group based on her deep knowledge of copyright, defamation, and other third-party rights.
She represents photographers, artists, collectors, museums, galleries, and publishers in all transactional issues. She provides guidance on best practices in using content and offers guidance in areas of content, and a pre-publication review of books, documentaries, films, podcasts, and television series. Nancy counsels on creative deal structuring, the acquisition and sale of properties and art collections, and reviews licensing and services agreements; exhibition agreements, and agreements involving interactive and emerging technologies.
Nancy is a frequent speaker throughout the United States and Europe on copyright, media, and licensing and has received significant recognition for her expertise in copyright law. She is a Past President of the Copyright Society of the USA (CSUSA) and a member of the ABA IP Task Force on Copyright Reform. She has been published by Allworth Press, ABA Landslide Journal, and a book of essays she co-edited on 21st Century Copyright Law published with Focal Press. She holds a JD from Rutgers University School of Law.
Panel 3:
Moderator:
Shyam Balganesh, Sol Goldman Professor of Law
Shyam Balganesh writes and teaches in the areas of copyright law, intellectual property, and legal theory. He has written extensively on understanding how intellectual property and innovation policy can benefit from the use of ideas, concepts, and structures from different areas of the common law, especially private law. His recent work explores the interaction between copyright law and key institutional features of the American legal system. He is also working on a series of articles advancing an account of “legal internalism” that explains the shape and trajectory of legal thinking. Balganesh’s work has appeared in leading law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. He is also a co-author of sections of the leading copyright law treatise Nimmer on Copyright.
Before joining the Columbia Law School faculty in 2021, Balganesh was a professor of law and co-director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Prior to that, he was a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles and essays editor of the Yale Law Journal and a student fellow at the Information Society Project. Prior to that, he spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a B.C.L. and M.Phil.
In 2017, he was elected a member of the American Law Institute, and since 2015 he has served as an adviser to the Restatement of the Law, Copyright. Balganesh also has been recognized for his teaching: In 2017, he received the Robert A. Gorman Award for Excellence in Teaching and, in 2015, the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course, both at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Speakers:
Joe Keeley, Principal, Keeley Law & Policy
Joe is the only person to have served as the Chief Intellectual Property Counsel of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and is currently with the law firm of Michael Best & Friedrich LLP where he works with their IP and federal strategies teams.
In his previous role as General Counsel and Deputy Staff Director of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe coordinated multiple judicial priorities of Congress and the White House including moving federal judicial nominees including those to the U.S. Supreme Court through the Committee. His legislative responsibilities included all civil matters including copyright, trademark, and patent legislation, privacy, antitrust, arbitration, litigation funding, and artificial intelligence. Joe negotiated, drafted, and guided to enactment the 2020 intellectual property legislative package that created the Copyright Claims Board while also enacting a felony streaming provision. Previously, Joe guided to enactment the end of the Section 119 compulsory satellite license.
Earlier, Joe served as Chief Courts & Intellectual Property Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, during which time he focused on patent reform, an extensive 20-hearing copyright law review, and enactment of both the Music Modernization Act and the Defend Trade Secrets Act. The Music Modernization Act has already paid out over $1 billion in royalties to songwriters worldwide via the newly created Mechanical Licensing Collective of Nashville. He holds a J.D. from George Mason University, and earned his B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lidia Kim, VP of Business and Legal Affairs, Concord Publishing
Lidia Kim is VP of Business & Legal Affairs at Concord, the independent, worldwide leader in the development, management and acquisition of sound recordings, music publishing and theatrical performance rights and narrative content. In her current role, Lidia oversees the digital business for Concord Music Publishing, which includes developing strategy and advising on global digital and catalog matters, negotiating major blanket licensing deals, and managing the digital licensing network, DSP relations, and mass copyright litigation and other new media rights enforcement matters. She is also a member of The MLC's Operations Advisory Committee. Lidia joined Concord in 2017 when the company acquired Imagem. Prior to this she was a legal fellow at Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. She is an alumna of NYU and Notre Dame Law School.
Elliott Peters, Vice President of Global Business Development, EMPIRE Records
As General Counsel at EMPIRE (an international independent recorded music and music publishing company), Elliott works with the EMPIRE team to facilitate new digital distribution, promotional, investment, acquisition and other business opportunities in support of EMPIRE’s world class roster of talent. Prior to EMPIRE, he held senior leadership positions at SoundCloud, Rdio, Apple iTunes, and Warner Music Group, and also provided significant consulting services for various companies including Luminary Media (podcasting) and Evil Genius Productions (table top role playing game company built on the Wizards of the Coast D&D platform featuring Cinematic Adventures based on iconic 80’s movies).
Elliott began his legal career practicing securities and mergers & acquisitions in the New York, London and Hong Kong offices of Shearman & Sterling. He received his JD from Columbia Law School and B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton).
Judge Steve Ruwe, Copyright Royalty Judge, Copyright Royalty Board
Judge Steve Ruwe has served on the Copyright Royalty Board since October 2019.
He has a broad background in copyright and intellectual property law. Before his appointment to the Copyright Royalty Board, Ruwe served as assistant general counsel in the Copyright Office’s Office of the General Counsel. He began his service in the Copyright Office in 2006, rising from the position of attorney-advisor to assistant general counsel. Ruwe’s work at the Copyright Office ranged over many issues, including statutory licensing, CRB rate determinations, regulations, policy studies, and appellate litigation.
From 2016 to 2018, he held the position of attorney advisor for copyright law and policy with the Patent and Trademark Office’s Office of Policy and International Affairs. With the PTO, Ruwe served on U.S. delegations in international negotiations, including NAFTA/USMCA negotiations and treaty negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.
Panel 4:
Moderator:
Prof. Shyam Balganesh
Speakers:
Johan Axhamn, Senior Lecturer, Department of Business Law, Lund University
Johan Axhamn has published over 20 articles – most of them in English – in leading Nordic and international law journals and anthologies. He is the Head of Unit (subject group lead) for Market and Media Law at Lund University Centre for Business Law, and a member of the management team of the Centre. He is also a research associate at the Institute for Intellectual Property and Market Law (IFIM) and the Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute (IRI) – both at Stockholm University. He has been a visiting researcher at Columbia Law School (New York), the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam, and the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law (SERI) at the University of Oslo.
Anupama Sawkar, Special Counsel for Intellectual Property, Federal Trade Commission
Anu Sawkar is Special Counsel for Intellectual Property in the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning, where she focuses on antitrust and intellectual property policy and enforcement. She previously served as Special Counsel for Intellectual Property, Attorney Advisor in the Legal Policy Section, and Honors Program Trial Attorney in a civil enforcement section in the United States Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Prior to joining the Antitrust Division, Dr. Sawkar served as a law clerk to the Hon. Sharon Prost at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and to the Hon. Paul Kelly, Jr. at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She has also worked as a patent agent in private practice. Dr. Sawkar received her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, her Ph.D. from The Scripps Research Institute, and her B.A. from Northwestern University.
David Strickler, Copyright Royalty Judge, Copyright Royalty Board
David Strickler is a lawyer and economist, and also, since May 2013, a United States Copyright Royalty Judge. In this position, he – together with two other judges – presides over trials involving the setting of royalty rates in the music business and the distribution of cable television revenues to copyright owners.
Judge Strickler received his MA in economics from Columbia University in New York City in 1977, where he was a University Fellow. He earned his undergraduate degree, also in economics, in 1976, from NYU, where he was a Regents Scholar (and a member of the baseball team). Judge Strickler received his JD (cum laude) from the University of Miami School of Law in 1980, where he was a member of the Law Review. In law school, Judge Strickler was also a Law & Economics Fellow.
After law school, he spent several years as a federal litigator with the Department of Energy and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Thereafter, he was a commercial litigator in private practice in New Jersey for almost three decades.
Judge Strickler teaches microeconomics and macroeconomics at the college level. In addition to teaching at NYU Steinhardt, he has taught economics at the university level.
In the interdisciplinary area of copyrights, economics, and law, Judge Strickler is a member of the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues (SERCI). He was a featured speaker at SERCI’s 2015 Annual Congress in Glasgow, Scotland, and he has been an anonymous article referee for the organization’s journal, the Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues (RERCI). In December 2015, RERCI published an article by Judge Strickler entitled: Royalty Rate Setting for Sound Recordings by the United States Copyright Royalty Board: The Judicial Need for Independent Scholarly Economic Analysis.
Tim Wu, Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology
Hailed as the “architect” of the Biden administration’s competition and antitrust policies, Tim Wu writes and teaches about private power and related topics. First known for coining the term “net neutrality” in 2002, in recent years Wu has been a leader in the revitalization of American antitrust and has taken a particular focus on the growing power of the big tech platforms. In 2021, he was appointed to serve in the White House as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy.
A professor at Columbia Law School since 2006, Wu has also held posts in public service. He was enforcement counsel in the New York Attorney General’s Office, worked on competition policy for the National Economic Council during the Barack Obama administration, and worked in antitrust enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission. In 2014, Wu was a Democratic primary candidate for lieutenant governor of New York.
In his most recent book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (2018), he argues that corporate and industrial concentration can lead to the rise of populism, nationalism, and extremist politicians. His previous books include The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (2016), The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (2010), and Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World (2006), which he co-authored with Jack Goldsmith.
Wu was a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and also has written for Slate, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. He once explained the concept of net neutrality to late-night host Stephen Colbert while he rode a rollercoaster. He has been named one of America’s 100 most influential lawyers by the National Law Journal; has made Politico’s list of 50 most influential figures in American politics (more than once); and has been included in the Scientific American 50 of policy leadership.
Wu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as a law clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.