My initial efforts at IP creation through music were a failure. In my freshman year at Cornell I auditioned for the marching band. The music director chose 35 trumpeters; he let me struggle along as the 36th. But I found my calling in law practice by using my oral and written skills to craft arguments and strategies to help my clients in litigation or parties in mediation resolve their IP disputes. I try now to only play my trumpet when our dogs are listening.
My clients create and monetize their intellectual property and seek my help to protect their creations from infringement. My clients include writers, photographers, illustrators, designers, artists, an Oscar-winning documentarian and advertising and marketing agencies. To provide them with the best service at Leichtman Law PLLC, where I am counsel, I sharpen my skills and stay on top of the ever evolving changes in copyright and trademark law by:
✔ Since 2016 teaching a copyright litigation seminar at Cornell Law School as an adjunct professor. My students’ curiosity and excitement about IP law elevates mine.
✔ Serving as a mediator for the past 25 years in the Southern District of NY Mediation Program handling only copyright and trademark cases. The skill IP counsel display in these cases informs and adds to my own.
✔ Speaking about IP developments before bar associations and IP organizations. A cogent presentation before these groups helps prepare me to do the same in a courtroom.
✔ Taking leadership roles in national intellectual property organizations, including by co-founding and acting as the first president of the Intellectual Property Institute, composed of IP lawyers in the US and Canada who are all Fellows of the Litigation Counsel of America, the trial lawyers honorary society. When I litigate outside New York, I work with local counsel with whom I already have a close relationship.
✔ And by sharing with an internet audience my thoughts and commentary about trends in copyright and trademark through this blog, IP in BRIEF.
I live in a creaky brownstone in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn with my wife, a former federal prosecutor and two hyper-active dogs, Chloe and Duke
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