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Lloyd Jassin

Biography


Attorney at Law  |  New York & New Jersey  |  www.copylaw.com

Lloyd Jassin is a New York intellectual property and media attorney who serves as outside business affairs counsel for authors, literary agents, publishers, and entertainment companies. His practice focuses on publishing, entertainment, and media law, with extensive experience in rights transactions, franchise-level negotiations, and the representation of high-profile authors and rights holders. He has negotiated the adaptation of books into scripted films and television series and regularly counsels clients on the long-term exploitation strategies that complex franchise and catalog properties require.

Industry Background

What distinguishes his practice is a decade of hands-on publishing industry experienceefore he entered the law. At Simon & Schuster, he served as Publicity Director for Prentice Hall Press, where his list included long shelf-life nonfiction and brand extension properties — among them Frommer’s Travel Guides and the New York Public Library reference book series — as well as bestselling authors including Simon Winchester and Gael Greene. Earlier, at St. Martin’s Press, he served as Associate Publicity Director and later Advertising Director, where he worked with authors and cultural figures including Ntozake Shange, Ishmael Reed, R. Buckminster Fuller, James Herriot, Terry Pratchett, The Who, and June Carter Cash. At St. Martin's, he produced long-form (The Who Maximum R&B), and short-form (J.K. Lasser Institute Tax Tips), radio programs. That background shapes how he counsels clients: he understands not only the legal risks in publishing and media, but how editorial, commercial, and reputational considerations interact at each stage of a project’s life.

Legal Career

He received his law degree from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1991. Following graduation, he joined the legal department of Viacom Enterprises, then the world’s largest independent distributor of feature films and off-network television programming, where he gained firsthand experience in merchandise licensing, broadcast and cable media, and the multi-platform exploitation structures that large content libraries demand. He subsequently joined Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, one of the country’s preeminent intellectual property firms, where he worked on complex copyright and trademark matters for clients in the fashion, film, television, music, and licensing industries. He is admitted to practice in New York and New Jersey and before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Representative Areas of Practice


Publishing and Entertainment Transactions

•       Book publication agreements (trade, academic, self-publishing platforms)

•       Author-agent contracts and collaboration agreements

•       Creator and joint author agreements

•       Option and acquisition agreements (book-to-screen)

•       Film and television adaptation agreements

•       Distribution agreements

•       Chain-of-title analysis and clearance for franchise properties

•       Underlying rights clearance for adaptations and derivative works

Literary Estates and Catalog Management

•       Literary estate representation, including licensing, rights reversion, copyright termination, and catalog management for the estates of deceased authors

◦       Licensing (print, digital, dramatic, and ancillary rights)

◦       Copyright termination under 17 U.S.C. §§ 203 and 304

◦       Rights reversion, including contractual reversion triggers and out-of-print clause analysis

Copyright

•       Fair use, ownership, duration, and infringement opinions

•       Copyright registration and recordation

•       Permissions and licensing

•       Copyright termination (17 U.S.C. § 203)

Trademark

•       USPTO prosecution and maintenance

•       Clearance searches and likelihood-of-confusion analysis

•       Trademark licensing

Defamation, Privacy, and Pre-Publication Review

•       Pre-publication manuscript review for defamation, invasion of privacy, false light, and right-of-publicity exposure

•       Celebrity and public figure biography vetting, including assessment of reputational claims, source reliability, and the distinction between protected opinion and actionable statements of fact

•       Portrayal of living and deceased persons in nonfiction, memoir, and narrative journalism

•       Right-of-publicity analysis across jurisdictions

•       Pre-publication clearance for publishers, authors, and media companies

Recognition and Community

His writing and lectures have established him as a recognized voice in publishing law. He is co-author of The Copyright Permission and Libel Handbook (John Wiley & Sons), a standard reference for publishing professionals navigating permissions, fair use, and content liability. He has contributed articles to Publishers Weekly, the Authors Guild Bulletin, and Author 101: Bestselling Secrets from Top Agents (Adams Media). He has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Columbia Journalism Review, among other publications.

He served as Adjunct Professor at the New York University Center for Publishing, teaching publishing law, digital rights, and permissions. He has lectured at BookExpo, the Book Industry Study Group, the Dramatists Guild, and the Copyright Society. For more than a decade he served as First Amendment Counsel for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA).  He serves on the Advisory Board of Beacon Press and previously served on the Advisory Board of the Center for Independent Publishing. 

Contact:

Email: jassin@copylaw.com

Telephone: (917) 748-7300


Selected Speaking Engagements

Recent Articles


"Books are the intellectual property headwaters of revenue streams as diverse as motion pictures, podcasts, LLMs and ways previously thought possible only in science fiction." 

                -- Lloyd Jassin


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