Tag: anxiety

What Creative Clients Want

What do creative people need from their lawyer?

Trust

The #1 reason people hire and stay with a lawyer is that they trust the lawyer’s counsel. They trust the lawyer to help them reach their goals, help face their issues, and help solve their problems. This trust is built upon many factors, but rests on the knowledge that the lawyer understands the situation and cares about the people involved. Even if the issue or problem is business related, it is the people and relationships involved in the situation that truly matter. I work very hard to earn my clients’ trust, and always remember that legal issues always affect people.

Creativity

Creative people and businesses are trying to do new, different, and exciting things. They need lawyers with an attitude that says “here are the legal issues and risks – now let’s find a way to make this work…” instead of “don’t do that…” My goal is to enable your creativity, not set hurdles.

Responsiveness

The #1 complaint clients have with their lawyers is a lack of responsiveness and communication. I have been working with clients in various industries for over 15 years and have never been accused of a lack of responsiveness. If we’re working together you will know where things stand. I return calls. I respond to email.

Legal Competency

Legal competency is the minimum qualification to pass the bar exam and get a license to practice. There are hundreds of lawyers in the phone book that have obviously passed the bar. So what makes one different from the other?

Passion for the subject.

Before becoming a lawyer I was a graphic designer, art director, creative director, and marketing consultant. I have a passion for the creative industries.

Summary

My firm is dedicated to helping creative people, businesses, and organizations promote and protect their creative ideas and other intellectual property. My
background in the creative industry makes me one of very few attorneys that truly understand the creative spirit.

I’ll focus on the legal and business aspects of creativity: copyright, trademark, employment, licensing, business formation, business development, contracts, trade secrets, and free speech – letting you focus on what you do best – create.

My clients are writers, designers, producers, artists, musicians, photographers, entertainers, arts organizations, marketing firms, advertising agencies, architects, publishers, and other business with creative assets to promote or protect.

If it sounds like I’m the kind of lawyer you would like to work with, please call or drop me and email. I’ll be happy to talk with you, and don’t worry – there is no obligation or fee for the initial discussion.

$45 Insurance Policy

$45 Creative Insurance Policy

Creative people are always trying to save a buck. That’s not a bad thing unless it’s in the situation of deciding to save the $45 fee to register a copyright. If you think your song, art, design, or other creative expression is going to be exposed to the public in some form – and that your work is good enough that someone might “accidentally” be a little too “inspired” by your work (in other words: rip it off) – then the $45 is the best money you’ll ever spend.

Here’s why:

1. All copyright infringement litigation must be conducted in Federal Court – and to get into Federal Court you have to have a valid registration before you can even file. In other words, to enforce your rights, you have to file anyway – so you should file right after you’ve created the work in question.

2. If you file BEFORE the infringing action (before your work gets ripped off) then you are eligible to receive both “statutory damages” of anywhere between $750 and $30,000 per infringement (each song on a CD, each photo, etc. produced is an infringement) – and up to $150,000 per infringement if the infringement was “willfully committed.” Additionally, if the valid registration was filed before the infringing act, you can also collect your attorney fees.

3. If you DO NOT file before the action, then you have to prove your “actual” damages (which can be hard in many cases) and you have to pay your own attorney fees.

What does this really mean? Let’s say you would sell the rights to use a photo in a magazine for $5,000. Now, let’s say the magazine prints the photo without your permission or paying you anything in a run of 100,000 copies – willfully ripping you off. If you filed the registration before the infringement, then you could collect somewhere between $750 and $150,000 for each of the photo they used without permission (NOT for each copy produced) – plus your attorney fees. This is strong incentive for the magazine to settle with you before trial. If you had not filed the registration before the infringement, then you will have to prove the actual damages (in this case probably a max of $5,000) in Federal Court. You’ll have to pay your own attorney fees – probably at least $10,000 to take a copyright case through trial in Federal Court. So, they may have ripped you off, but you’ll be at least $5,000 out of pocket to enforce your rights.

Registering your work is easy. Just go to www.copyright.gov and download the appropriate form and follow the instructions. If you need help, call me.

Initial Post

Hello and welcome to the NEW – “Promoting Creativity – Protecting Ideas” blog. I’m basically just moving the blog to reside under my houchinlaw domain. I’ll be keeping things posted here instead of at the former site on blogspot. The only bad thing about this blog editor is that it doesn’t seem to have a spell-checker in the editing/writing tool, so there will probably be some typos – at least more than there would have been otherwise. Please forgive me (or better yet – email kevin.houchin@houchinlaw.com) to point them out…