Richard A. Rosen
January Term Professor
A graduate of UC Davis’ King Hall, where he received his J.D. with Honors in 1976, Richard A. Rosen began practice in the Labor Department of O’Melveny & Myers, one of the leading law firms in Los Angeles (and now the world). He has practiced entertainment law in Los Angeles for 30 years, beginning at the law firm of Pollock, Bloom & Dekom, and thereafter in his own firm. He has handled varied legal matters for high-profile clients in the motion picture-television industry including actors and performers, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Gary Busey, Adrienne Barbeau, Rebecca De Mornay, Scott Baio, Leif Garrett, Max Baer Jr. and Flip Wilson; producers and directors, such as Alexander and Ilya Salkind, Frank Marshall, Peter Bogdanovich, Walter Hill, Stephen Deutsch, and Jim and Ken Wheat; as well as countless artists, special effects wizards, award-winning photographers, writers, editors, singers, songwriters, talent agencies, production/distribution companies, management companies, distributors and foreign sales companies.
As a litigator, he has been successful in a number of state and federal jury trials, including cases involving copyright, trademark, contract and accounting claims, business and personal torts, dissolution of partnership, Lanham Act and rights of publicity. He both arbitrated disputes under various entertainment industry collective bargaining agreements as well as acted as the arbitrator in such matters. In his non-litigation practice, Rosen has negotiating agreements in almost every area of the entertainment industry, including motion picture and television, book publishing, music publishing, CDs/albums and sound tracks, animated programming, live theater and musical theater productions. He has been the production attorney on a number of independent films, including, most recently “La Linea” starring Ray Liotta and Andy Garcia, and has negotiated agreements with countless film studios, cable television channels, film/tv production and distribution companies.
Rosen’s experience as the attorney for “Sisterella,” an original concept album which became a full musical theater production in 1996-97 in Pasadena, California; Vienna; Frankfurt; and Melbourne, Australia, gained the attention of playwrights/actors Renee Taylor and Joe Bologna who asked him to co-produce the off-Broadway production of their play “Bermuda Avenue Triangle” at the Promenade Theatre in NYC in 1997. His love of theatre, and, in particular, musical theatre led him to serve two terms as the President of the Academy for New Musical Theatre—a Los Angeles-based training ground for writers and composers wanting to work in musical theatre. Upon his return from New York, Rosen’s client, Paul Davids asked him to co-produce the independent motion picture “Starry Night.” The picture was shown at the Montreal Film Festival and won an award for fans’ favorite film at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
Rosen’s academic experience includes a year teaching legal research and writing/moot court at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana; three (3) years of teaching Employment Discrimination at Loyola (Los Angeles) Law School; and teaching Entertainment Law at DePaul Law School in Chicago (Summer 2008 and again Summer 2010), the University of Western Ontario School of Law (January, 2009), and at the University of Waikato Law School in Hamilton, New Zealand in February 2010. He recently returned from China where we taught Introduction to American Law and International Film Studies at Guangxi University. In each of his Entertainment Law classes he combined the use of a traditional casebook with his substantial background in practical aspects of the film, television, theatre and music industries (both transactional and litigation) to provide his students with a much broader understanding and appreciation of these industries than they would receive in a more traditional course. He has been invited to teach Entertainment Law again in summer 2012 at Singapore Management University School of Law.