Contemporary Issues in Music & Copyright Law

Ken Abdo is a partner at the law firm of Fox Rothschild LLP. For over 40 years, Ken has extensive experience as legal counsel to artists, creators and businesses in the music and entertainment industries. Ken’s career has been a storied ride working with music artists and their estates. Some of his many clients over the years include Kool & The Gang, Hall & Oats, Three Dog Night, Roberta Flack, TOTO, the estates of Prince, Muddy Waters, Pete Seeger and songwriters of classic recordings such as Funkytown, Rhinestone Cowboy, and appropriately I Love Rock & Roll. He has served in national music industry leadership positions including as a National Trustee of The Recording Academy (presenters of the Grammy® Awards) and National Chair of the ABA Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries. He has been selected to the Billboard magazine’s Top Music Lawyer list for the past 9 years.

Peter Anderson is a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP with over four decades of experience in copyright and entertainment litigation. He represents recording artists, songwriters, record companies, and music publishers, and, for example, he was lead counsel in the Stairway to Heaven litigation, winning a jury verdict of non-infringement followed by an en banc decision of affirmance, Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin, 952 F.3d 1051 (9th Cir. 2020). He also has obtained dismissals and summary judgments for multiple artists, songwriters, record companies, and music publishers, including, for example, the Weeknd, Mariah Carey, Lil Nas X, and Gwen Stefani, and Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group.

Peter is a graduate of the UCLA School of Law. Among other awards and recognitions, Billboard magazine has been named him a Top Music Lawyer in each of the last six years, and this year Variety named him to its 2025 list of Music Legal Elite and The Hollywood Reporter named him in its Music’s 57 Top Power Lawyers. Peter also is a frequent speaker and panelist.

Andy Blair is the founder and Managing Director of Reverb Data, the music industry’s only data-focused strategic and legal advisory firm. A widely-respected voice on data issues in the music industry, Andy spent 9 years as Chief Privacy Officer at Universal Music Group. While at UMG he built a global privacy and data risk management program and supported major initiatives in streaming, merch, fan data, advertising, royalties, M&A, and more.

Andy offers a rare combination of legal, technical, and music industry expertise. He holds a degree in computer science and began his career in technology roles before attending law school and working at a major international law firm. While at UMG he guided the company on data issues across every part of the company and around the world, resulting in a deep understanding of how data is generated, collected, used, and shared throughout the music industry.

Bob Clarida, a partner at the New York firm of Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt LLP, advises clients in a wide range of industries and has litigated a number of high-profile copyright matters and argued significant federal appeals in several Circuits. He speaks and writes frequently on copyright issues, is the author of the treatise “Copyright Law Deskbook” (Bloomberg, 2d ed. 2016) and is a principal presenter of the year-end review of copyright decisions delivered each June at the annual meeting of the Copyright Society of the USA. He co-authors the regular copyright law column in the New York Law Journal, is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Law School, and has served as an expert reviewer for the Multistate Bar Exam in the intellectual property area. He earned his J.D. from Columbia, after earning a Ph.D. in music composition, and receiving a Fulbright fellowship to the Musicology Institute of Gothenburg University, Sweden, where he co-authored a book on musical semiotics with Dr. Philip Tagg.

John Covach is Arthur Satz Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester, as well as Professor of Theory at the Eastman School of Music. Professor Covach teaches classes in traditional music theory as well as the history and analysis of popular music. He has published dozens of articles on topics dealing with popular music, twelve-tone music, and the philosophy and aesthetics of music. He is the principal author of the college textbook What’s That Sound? An Introduction to Rock Music (W.W. Norton) and has co-edited Understanding Rock (Oxford University Press), American Rock and the Classical Tradition and Traditions (Routledge), Institutions, and American Popular Music (Routledge), Sounding Out Pop (University of Michigan Press) and The Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones (Cambridge University Press). He is editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Prog (Cambridge University Press).

Dana DeVlieger is a copyright litigation associate in the New York office of Latham & Watkins LLP. She earned her JD at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Dana also holds master’s degrees from the University of Chicago and Ohio State University, as well as a PhD in Music Theory from the University of Minnesota, where her research focused on the use of musicological expert testimony in copyright infringement litigation.

Serona Elton is a full professor, Interim Vice Dean, and Chair of the Music Industry Department at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, as well as a Yamaha Master Educator. She is also Head of Educational Partnerships for The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC). Previously, Elton worked for or provided consulting services to Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and other music-related companies.

Elton is co-author of the book Music Business Handbook and Career Guide (13th edition) and was awarded the first-ever Music Business Educator of the Year Award by the Music Business Association in 2023.

Elton is a member of the PEACE Through Music Award Committee and has held or presently holds leadership positions in the American Musicological Society, CMS, MEIEA, the Copyright Society, the Florida Bar EASL Section, and the Recording Academy, Florida Chapter. She is also an alumna of the Nashville-based Leadership Music program, and a licensed attorney in New York and Florida.

Robert Fink is Professor of Musicology and Music Industry, and the director of the Berry Gordy Music Industry Center. Trained as a music theorist and musicologist, his primary areas of interest include musical analysis, avant-garde and minimal music, popular music studies, timbre and rhythm in music, and the history of electronic dance music.

He has published widely on contemporary and popular music in academic journals, and is the author of Repeating Ourselves, a 2005 study of American minimal music as cultural practice; and The Relentless Pursuit of Tone, an interdisciplinary survey of research into the “sound” of popular music, awarded the American Musicological Society’s Ruth Solie Prize for best edited collection in 2018. Professor Fink also has extensive experience as a forensic musicologist in copyright litigation; a list of clients and fee structure is available upon request.

Katherine M. Leo is associate professor of music at Millikin University and author of Forensic Musicology and the Blurred Lines of Federal Copyright History (Lexington). She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from The Ohio State University and a J.D. from its Moritz College of Law. As a cross-disciplinary scholar and expert witness, Dr. Leo investigates the histories, methods, and ethics of forensic musicology. Her internationally recognized research on copyright law and the US commercial music industry has been featured most recently in the Journal of Musicological Research, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and the Oxford Handbook series.

Barbara Marchevsky is a Shareholder in Fredrikson & Byron’s Intellectual Property Litigation department. She represents clients in enforcing and defending their intellectual property, including in copyright litigation. She has assisted clients across diverse industries, such as artists, software companies, content creators, and arts organizations. For example, Barbara was a member of the team representing the Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson in litigation concerning the late star’s intellectual property assets. Her experience spans federal trial and appellate courts nationwide, including venues in Delaware, Minnesota, Illinois, California, Massachusetts, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Barbara provides comprehensive support at every stage of intellectual property matters, from pre-suit evaluations and negotiations through discovery, dispositive motions, mediations, settlements, and trial. She is deeply committed to helping clients meet their goals and utilizes her written and oral advocacy skills to help clients achieve successful outcomes.

Tim Matson is Counsel at the national law firm of Fox Rothschild LLP.  He is an experienced and skilled transactional lawyer, litigator and intellectual property attorney with more than 20 years of experience representing musicians, filmmakers, media talent, writers, visual artists and other creators of artistic works.  Tim has worked with several legacy artists on copyright transfer termination issues, including the filing of the nation’s first post-1978 notice of termination.  On the deal-making side, Tim has handled all aspects of major publishing, recording, licensing and other agreements in the entertainment industries, as well as IP components of business acquisitions and asset transfers involving patented technologies, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. With respect to litigation, Tim has handled cases and arbitrations involving copyright, trademark, trade secret, right of publicity and business contract disputes.

Tony Mendoza co-chairs Fredrikson & Byron’s Arts, Communications, Entertainment & Sports (ACES) Practice Group. Over the course of his three decades of experience, Tony has worked on numerous projects in the arts, communications, and entertainment industries, including representation of music estates, nonprofit arts organizations, recording contracts, publishing, movie productions, copyright and trademark matters, business transactions, licensing, financing, intellectual property disputes, regulatory, tax, and M&A.  Tony currently Chairs the Sports, Arts & Entertainment Section and the Communications Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association, is a member of the ABA Forum on Entertainment Law.  Since his days as a McDonald’s All-American high school saxophone player, and self-taught bass player, Tony has been a member of bands that have recorded and released three (3) albums, performed in the U.S. and U.K., and still performs locally with his band The Long Goodbyes. Having “paid his dues” and “learned the hard way” in the arts and entertainment industry, Tony incorporates that experience into his arts and entertainment law practice—representing his clients on business and intellectual property matters.