Overview
Digital is fundamentally changing everything. Disruptive innovations can create thorny business and legal challenges. Dealing with the unpredictable and unprecedented nature of the digital revolution requires creative thinking and a grasp of the pitfalls and competitive tensions inherent throughout the life cycle of a product or business start-up. Your success in the transformative digital media ecosystem depends on how you identify, confront and mitigate those risks.
Conquering the digital landscape
Our team has decades of experience and a proven record of success in representing an extraordinary spectrum of clients—from global brands to startups—in the entertainment, technology, financial services, and advertising and marketing industries.
Now, by being able to work with the firm’s new disruptive full-service digital and technology consulting team, we bring an unrivaled combination of industry knowledge not only to courtroom presentations but to the risk avoidance and mitigation advice we provide you.
Plugged-in from the start
In a landscape where the law remains many steps behind the technology, having a legal team accustomed to pushing the boundaries can be critical to your ability to emerge as a market leader. Strategically located in the geographic hotbeds of thought leadership and incubators, we are ideally positioned to represent new media, entertainment, global brand and technology companies, from startups to publicly traded Fortune 100s.
We have the experience and know-how to protect your rights, defend your brand and content, and manage your risks.
A formidable team close at hand
Our strong litigation capabilities in the digital space—from bet-the-company cases to prelitigation risk avoidance and compliance counseling, from negotiated resolutions or arbitrations to trial and appellate advocacy—would not be possible without our deep bench of highly accomplished litigators. Our team brings critical knowledge of and access to federal and state courts in the most significant hubs—Silicon Valley, Los Angeles’ Silicon Beach, San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C.—in the new digital media world.
Integrated, comprehensive services
Our digital media shop offers a multidisciplinary approach in tackling the issues that directly impact the lifeblood of your company. The strength and diversity of our consulting and legal services provide you with integrated counsel, assisting clients of every size and stage.
Who we work with
From the earliest stages of the digital media wave, we have navigated new terrain and guided clients in the technology, entertainment, software, marketing, media, and gaming industries toward realizing the opportunities in innovative technologies and creative business models.
What we do
Our services include:
- Intellectual property protection and defense
- Social media: advertising and marketing
- Data security and privacy
- Entertainment: content creation and delivery
- Employment and labor relations
Experience
Success That Breaks the Mold
Our win rate speaks for itself and demonstrates how litigation can serve as a critical weapon in a company's business strategy arsenal. We can obtain results in litigation that enable you to reach the next level in product development or business expansion. As only a small sample, Manatt lawyers have prevailed in precedent-setting cases:
- Protecting a client's valuable website data from unlawful copying and reposting by a competitor by developing an entirely novel, and ultimately successful, cyber trespass theory.
- Blocking unlawful bots from pirating Internet goods and harming public access to sales by obtaining a series of federal court injunctions that put the malware proponents out of business.
- Invalidating a series of patents that had created an unlawful stranglehold around the Internet music distribution business, thereby paving the way for today's music download and streaming services.
- Winning trailblazing lawsuits for the world's leading giant-screen-format film company that protected its film and digital projection system technologies from trade secret thieves, allowed the conversion of traditional cinema formats to large-format digital media in 2-D and 3-D and ensured the broad digital distribution of its film library.
- Defeating a Lanham Act false advertising challenge to a leading online tax software provider's multimedia national advertising campaign.
- Protecting leading mobile carrier's 4G LTE network speed and reliability advertising claims against competitor challenges.
- Obtaining dismissals of class actions against satellite television and radio service providers filed on behalf of subscribers by enforcing arbitration provisions and class waivers in online service contracts.
- Defending major studio and brands against celebrity allegations of idea theft and violations of the right of publicity in movies, TV shows and advertising.
- Favorably resolving class actions alleging violations of consumer privacy for several national and global retailers.
- Leading the response to significant data security incidents for a wide variety of clients, including coordinating the public relations, notice, lobbying, insurance coverage, litigation avoidance and risk assessment aspects.
Related Practices
Digital and Technology Consulting
Select Clients
Alcon Entertainment
Anonymous Content
Atom Factory
Atom Idea
BMG Rights Management GmbH
CBS Digital
EMI Music
Fox
IAC
NBC Universal
Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Ticketmaster
Warner Music
