When Worlds Collide: Emerging Trends in Media and Intellectual Property Litigation

Toby M.J. Butterfield is a partner in Moses & Singer's Intellectual Property and Litigation groups.

Mr. Butterfield has 20 years of experience litigating and counseling on copyright, trademark, defamation, software and digital media, and commercial matters. His clients include media and entertainment companies, major brand owners, technology companies and designers of luxury goods. His recent work includes successfully representing an "over the top" TV broadcaster in a distribution dispute with numerous Russian broadcasters; defense of a well-known theater production in litigation concerning music royalty payments; representation of a regional on-line pharmacy in cases concerning false advertising, trademark, fraud and RICO claims; defending book publishers in copyright litigations; and obtaining a fair use dismissal of copyright infringement claims against theater producers concerning a parody play. He has successfully defended film producers and distributors, theater producers, technology and software companies, and has obtained injunctions and seizure orders for magazine publishers and a well-known producer of children's TV programming. He regularly counsels IP owners and performs pre-publication and pre-broadcast review of content for publishers of books, motion pictures, newspapers and magazines.

Mr. Butterfield writes and speaks frequently for bar associations and industry organizations. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he has conducted a seminar on Social Media Law and Regulation since 2014. He co-chaired the Entertainment Business Law Seminar at NYU during the annual CMJ Music Festival. He has lectured at AIPLA's annual national conference and to PLI on copyright fair use, and authored the first chapter of Counseling Content Providers in the Digital Age on defamation for the New York State Bar Association. He has written for the ABA's Landslide magazine and wrote for Media Law Resource Center and other bar associations and publications regularly on Fair Use, Copyright Termination, the digital Millennium Copyright Act and other hot topics. He has lectured at legal and television industry conferences all over the world and taught Media and Entertainment Law at Cardozo Law School. Mr. Butterfield currently co-chairs MLRC's committee on Media Copyright and Trademark, and chaired the New York City Bar's Committee on Entertainment Law, its Committee on State Courts of Superior Jurisdiction, WNYC Radio's Community Advisory Board, and was Administrator of the New York State Supreme Court Screening Panel for Democratic Party judicial candidates in New York County.

He has appeared on BBC World News, Forbes TV, and been quoted by the New York Times, Forbes, Law360 and many other news and legal publications.

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Butterfield was a partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC.