The pace of regulatory change, heightened competition and convergence have created an environment which calls for media lawyers with heavyweight corporate, contentious and regulatory expertise and the ability to handle the largest cross-border media work. At Herbert Smith our cross-practice media group can offer all this and more.
Our media client list covers big names in television and radio, books and publishing, internet, music, advertising and marketing. Household names such as AOL, BSkyB, Pearson Group, SMG, Time Warner all choose Herbert Smith both for our industry knowledge and our global profile.
Best known for our major corporate and M&A work in broadcast media, we have specialists right across the media sectors where our technical and industry experience and broader corporate knowledge enables us to work with clients in all aspects of the media, including:
- programming and rights acquisition agreements
- advising on commercial, competition and regulatory aspects of establishing channels and their distribution
- joint venture issues
- licensing and other issues related to operation of conditional access systems and other facilities used by platform operators, channel and service providers
- operation of radio services codes relating to advertising, sponsorship and decency issues
- state aid issues related to funding of public sector broadcasters
Our award-winning competition and regulatory team has unrivalled expertise in the field of newspaper regulation.
On the contentious side, we bring to bear the formidable skills of our market-leading litigation and arbitration practice. In addition to large contractual disputes, our recent caseload of high-profile matters has involved issues of piracy, passing off, copyright infringement, defamation, privacy and many other issues in the intellectual property, information technology and communications arena. By way of example, we have represented Virgin in the Chris Evans litigation and Granada Media in proceedings brought by Michael Jackson.
As a major international practice we have the skills and expertise to advise not only on domestic matters but also on the largest cross-border transactions and cases. Our European alliance with Gleiss Lutz and Stibbe and our close relationships with leading US firms are of great benefit in this respect.
“this "stylish, sharp" group is...adept in handling disputes relating to the broadcasting industry…”
Chambers UK 2004-2005