The free music-sharing engines of Napster and its copycats were gutted more than a decade ago, but the attorneys at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP (Los Angeles, California) who helped content creators score the injunction against Napster's system say the case impacted their careers in ways that still echo today.
With each new technology come new challenges for Hollywood's lawyers, Mitchell Silberberg attorneys say. The law firm has been representing the makers and financiers of the world's top music, movies, television shows and video games since the advent of Hollywood, making the firm one of Law360's California Powerhouses.
"Litigation has become a different animal for the music companies," said Karin Pagnanelli, co-chair of the firm's intellectual property practice. "Ever since I was an associate working on Napster, it seems that we are able to be the firm that really can grow a lot in the areas the industry wants and needs."
Dating back to 1908, the midsize law firm and its 100 Los Angeles-based attorneys have been on the frontier of entertainment law and its offshoots, in part thanks to a longtime friendship between founder Mendel Silberberg and Harry Cohn, the founder of Columbia Pictures.
Cohn had Silberberg set up an office on the Columbia Pictures lot, and the firm went on to represent clients on both sides of the table in Hollywood as the entertainment industry exploded in Southern California.
The law firm in 1919 helped Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith leave the powerful studios — some of which were also represented by Mitchell Silberberg — and launch United Artists. Since then, Mitchell Silberberg has represented Howard Hughes, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson and Steve McQueen.
