Carole E. Handler

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Carole Enid Handler is an American lawyer. She is a vice-chair at Foley & Lardner LLP in the area of intellectual property (IP) litigation. Her experience lie in the areas of trademark, copyright and antitrust laws, particularly as those laws pertain to entertainment and media industry.

Handler is the daughter of Columbia Law School professor, the late Milton Handler^[1], and the mother of two daughters, Ilana and Alisa Schoenbach^[2].

Carole Handler's noteworthy achievement is a case considered to be a landmark case that was won on an ironic, yet relatively simple, but critical oversight.^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6] At issue were the sale of intellectual property rights to certain Marvel Enterprises characters that Marvel's new owners thought it bought with the company. The claim was successful because, although the purchaser of those rights had a valid signed contract with the former owners of Marvel, the actual new rights were never registered with the United States Copyright Office. Handler's discovery of that fact, and her interpretation of IP law during the court proceedings, caused the rights to revert back to Marvel, which was bought by Avi Arad and Ike Perlmutter. ^[7]^[8]

1 Academic career
2 Legal career
3 Honors and awards
4 Philanthropy work
5 References
- 5.1 Further reading

[edit] Academic career

Handler received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College (A.B., with honors) in history and literature. She received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1975, and she then went on to achieve a master's degree in city planning from Penn, and also studied architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For the 2006-2007 academic year, Handler serves as an adjunct professor at Rutgers University Law School^[9].

[edit] Legal career

Carole Handler has tried many entertainment, trademark, copyright, and antitrust cases in both, state and federal courts in California, New York and Pennsylvania.

Arguably Handler's most significant work includes representing Arad and Perlmutter^[10]^[11] in its legal battle to keep the motion picture rights to one of its most lucrative characters, Spider-Man. ^[12]^[13] and protecting the right to copyrighted characters in online gaming, as well as establishing the motion picture industry's exclusive rights to control the distribution and performance of their copyrighted works in new media^[14]. Handler was quoted as saying, This was won on such "unique issues that will NEVER happen again," as a result of her exposing of the weakness.^{[citation needed]}

Handler has been working with studios to develop a legal licensing system for digital video. ^[15] Handler argues that the idea of Creative Commons, created by Stamford University professor Larry Lessig, is an "interesting compromise" - allowing for protection for copyrightable interests of the video itself while also acknowledging that the technology being used that causes the video to be accessed online modifies the licensing arrangement^[16]^[17].

Aside from Handler's experience in motion picture and entertainment licensing, she has worked with IP issues dealing with energy^[18], pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

Among her antitrust work, Handler has represented the National Basketball Association and several of the major motion picture studios defending them against "block booking" ^[19](When studios sell its films in bundles of 'all-or-nothing' packages; meaning that theaters were required to buy some of the studio's mediocre pictures along with the more salable ones).

In addition to the issue of Block Booking, Handler defends studios on the practice of "Clearance" (not allowing a film to be shown within a set radius of another theater showing the same film)^[20]

Handler had been a partner at the law firms of Kaye Scholer LLP., O’Donnell & Shaeffer LLP and Thelen Reid & Priest LLP.

[edit] Honors and awards

Carole Handler was named one of the "Top 50 Women Litigators in California" by Daily Journal Extra in 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2002. In 2001^[21], and was named one of the "Lawyers of the Year" by California Lawyer. She is an adjunct professor of antitrust and intellectual property law at the University of Southern California. She has also taught at UCLA Law School.

[edit] Philanthropy work

Handler has been a board member for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra since 2000 and for Public Counsel since 1999. She was the president of the Commission for Women's Empowerment of the American Jewish Congress^[22]. She is active with the California Women's Law Center and Legal Momentum, and is on the Executive Committee Antitrust Section for the Los Angeles County Bar Association.

In 1998, Handler took on the case of Holocaust rescuer (Righteous Gentile) Irene Gut Opdyke^[23], who had been deprived of the rights to her life story.

Handler is also a member of the American Bar Association, where she co-chairs the Intellectual Property Committee of the Antitrust Section. She is also a member of the New York State Bar Association and the Philadelphia Bar Association.