Film Law

Greetings Bloggers,

For this post I will be talking about legal problems that can occur in the film and entertainment industries. There are several things that can go wrong on your side as the filmmaker or the opposing side being the client. Having a well thought out and written contract will lessen the chances of legal troubles with your business deals…

Steven Spielberg has a pretty famous case that is still yet to be settled. DreamWorks pictures decided to break off their distribution contract with Paramount. Spielberg is one of the owners of DreamWorks and Universal is tied to Paramount. This created an issue between Spielberg and Universal. There was a Noncompete agreement as well as a lifetime of royalties promised to Spielberg in his contract with Universal. This split will be negotiated until 2017!

A film production company “After Dark Films” has filed a lawsuit with the Iowa Film commission. The Reason behind this was that the state did not provide the amount of tax credits to the filmmakers as promised. Iowa’s taxpayers were not happy about spending their tax money on shooting movies.

Now I was checking out the video copilot blog and found some people talking about Noncompete agreements. Something I did not know was that they are illegal in California; where the majority of the film industry is located. That’s good to know if that is where I plan on working before I start my own business. The bloggers on this message board all were very against signing a Noncompete agreement. This contract can break you if you ever decide to leave a business. It creates commitment with the company but then you have nothing to fall back on if your relationship with your current job goes south.

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you learned something about law and the film industry. If your interested in Music and Film follow me on twitter!

http://twitter.com/#!/GetRyanSheehy


Spielberg Consulting issues

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/spielberg-to-continue-consulting-with-universal-about-its-theme-parks/

DES MOINES, USA – Film Production

http://www.filmindustrynetwork.biz/state-forced-to-pay-434000-to-film-production-company-for-fraud/6540


Noncompete agreement
http://www.videocopilot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=57167