The Clinic is a leader in advocating for the public interest, freedom of expression, and innovation in matters concerning intellectual property, media, and technology law and policy. Many of our projects involve policy advocacy, including drafting white papers, regulatory filings, and amicus briefs, or leading public campaigns and educational programs. Thus, in 2014, we filed network neutrality comments on behalf of a large coalition of independent filmmaker organizations; in 2016, Clinic students conducted an in-depth study of university intellectual property policies and conducted a webinar for a nationwide audience of professors; and in 2018, we filed an amicus brief in the California Court of Appeal on behalf of the International Documentary Association in the important right of publicity case FX Networks v. de Havilland.
Since 2014, we have also represented large coalitions of filmmakers and authors seeking exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anticircumvention provisions. We obtained two such exemptions in 2014-2015 and again in 2017-2018, and we participated in the Copyright Office’s Section 1201 Study in 2016. The Clinic was recognized for this work with a 2016 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year award.