During his career, Goldman was a partner at the two most prominent entertainment law firms in Los Angeles history—Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp and Loeb & Loeb[1]—both of which celebrated their 100th anniversaries while Goldman was a partner.[2][3]
Napster case and aftermath
Goldman was a "key figure" representing the recording industry[4] in the influential[5]Napster copyright litigation.[6][7][8] The Recording Industry Association of America awarded him an Honorary Gold Record for his work on the case.[6] Following Napster's shutdown, one commentator observed that "[i]t took the Recording Industry Association of America's lawsuit against Napster to completely alter internet history" and quoted Goldman predicting the emergence in its place of legal alternatives such as iTunes.[9]
Goldman represented adult magazine Perfect 10 in copyright infringement lawsuits against Google and Amazon,[14][15][16] cited by The Verge as among the six most important Internet law cases of all time.[17] The cases had a "mixed result,"[18][19] but helped define the parameters under which a search engine can be held liable for the infringing conduct of its users.[20] In recent years, some courts, especially those in the Southern District of New York, have rejected the Ninth Circuit's novel "server test" and adopted the arguments made by Perfect 10--that the server test is "contrary to the text and legislative history of the Copyright Act," which "defines 'to display' as 'to show a copy of' a work, not 'to make and then show a copy of the copyrighted work.'"[21]
Myxer case
Reprising the Napster playbook, Goldman was lead counsel for the four major record companies—14 record labels in all—in a lawsuit against ringtonemobile appMyxer,[22][23][24][25] which was seen as "the mobile equivalent of ... the original Napster for music"[26] and allegedly had committed "tens of millions" of copyright violations.[27] After the court found Myxer liable for direct copyright infringement and rejected its fair use defense,[28] the case settled and Myxer shut down shortly thereafter.[29]
Kernel Records Oy v. Timbaland
Goldman defended music producer Timbaland in the Timbaland plagiarism controversy, a $20 million copyright infringement suit alleging that the hit Nelly Furtado song Do Itsampled an obscure Finnish recording.[30] It was widely believed that Timbaland's liability was "pretty clear cut" and that he had "no argument to be made,"[31] but Timbaland ultimately prevailed on summary judgment and the court dismissed the suit.[32][33] In this "surprising" result, Timbaland successfully argued that because the plaintiff's work was initially published on the internet, it was "simultaneously published in the US" as well as everywhere else in the world. Therefore, as a "U.S. work," the plaintiff was required to register his copyright in the work before suing--which he had failed to do.[34]
Digital download class actions
Ultimately, Goldman served as lead counsel for Universal Music Group in a class action concerning digital royalty payments to recording artists from iTunes and similar services,[35] with the plaintiff class arguing that transmission via the internet called for a much higher royalty rate for artists. After a multiyear, hard-fought battle, the last of the major-label digital download class-action settlements closed what The Hollywood Reporter called an "important chapter in the legal history of the music business."[36]
O. J. Simpson civil case
The Daily Journal wrote, "The key to Goldman's success is his earlier experience in areas outside of intellectual property law."[37] Early in his career, Goldman handled "the difficult legal research and brief writing" for the plaintiff victims in the O. J. Simpson civil wrongful death case.[38][39] His briefs in the case included one leading to the admission of Nicole Brown's diary entries, a crucial difference from the criminal trial. Lead counsel Daniel Petrocelli explained, "The least explored aspect of the case is Simpson's motive. You cannot just say this murder was a culmination of domestic-violence incidents. You need to tell the jury a story. This was about a stormy relationship." Time magazine reported, "That strategy made the difference in understanding Simpson... Nicole's diary showed that she and Simpson were having fights in those last weeks. Their hostilities had taken a cruel turn. Simpson sent Nicole a letter that was a thinly veiled threat to report her to the IRS for failing to pay capital-gains taxes. Infuriated, she started to deny him access to the children.... She began to treat him like a stranger. That, Petrocelli said, is when three weeks of retaliation began. In that period, the lawyer argued, Simpson grew angrier and more obsessed with his ex-wife, developing a rage that resulted in death for her and Ron Goldman."[40]
The civil judge found the diary entries were admissible because they were pertinent to Nicole's state of mind, which in turn was relevant to Simpson's motive[41]—reversing a crucial ruling from the criminal case that excluded the diary as "inadmissible hearsay."[42] The civil court's novel ruling was upheld on appeal.[43] The Los Angeles Times wrote that this evidence "helped the plaintiffs tell their story of domestic violence" and show that when Nicole "rejected [Simpson] for good in the spring of 1994 ... he erupted in the same uncontrollable rage that had caused him to lash out at her in the past—only this time, he was brandishing a knife.[44] The $33.5 million civil verdict against Simpson "very nearly upstaged the president of the United States on the occasion of his State of the Union address,"[45] ending the case that "riveted America for two and a half years[.]"[46]
Other music litigation
Los Angeles Business Journal identified Goldman as one of the nation's top music litigators.[6] As "lead counsel in groundbreaking copyright infringement litigation" and "a veteran of high-stakes music industry skirmishes,"[47] he handled numerous cases that garnered media attention.
Goldman represented Geffen Records in its disputes with Courtney Love concerning her recording contract and the Nirvana catalog.[48] Responding to Love's claims that she was "determined to radically redefine the nature of the music recording business for the next century,"[53][54] Goldman's legal briefs dismissed Love's suit as a "meritless, inflammatory diatribe" designed to "attract media attention."[54] The court dismissed most of Love's claims before trial,[55] with the remainder of the case settling on the eve of trial.[56]
Goldman represented Universal Music Group against an international distributor of music to multinational airlines that settled for $30 million after Goldman was said to have "navigated the complexities of international air travel to score a summary judgment ruling that when it gets to a jury next month to decide damages could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars."[64][65][66][67][68]
Other music cases
Other music cases that drew media attention included:
defending Motown Records in a lawsuit brought by heirs of members of Motown's house band The Funk Brothers, including James Jamerson, concerning the band's ownership and royalty rights, if any, in the many hit songs on which they participated.[73]
defending John Newman in a suit for copyright infringement alleging that his #1 U.K. hit Love Me Again copied another song that also used the short phrase "I need to know now";[78]
obtaining a $7 million copyright judgment against a rap label that distributed infringing mixtapes;[79]
Goldman defended Hello! and ¡Hola! magazines in defamation suits brought by Kevin Costner for publishing an allegedly fictional interview with the actor/director concerning a child he purportedly fathered out of wedlock.[83]
In another defamation case, he represented Richard Simmons against the National Enquirer concerning an article alleging that Simmons had transitioned into a woman, before Simmons hired a different attorney to sue the magazine.[84]
In a case reminiscent of the Barbie Girl case, with its First Amendment overtones, he defended fashion designer Brian Lichtenberg in a trademark suit brought by pharmaceutical giant AbbVie objecting to Lichtenberg's parody sportswear—football jerseys with the words "Vicodin" and "Adderal" printed on the back where the player's name would ordinarily be found.[92][93]
His great-great-great uncle, Dankmar Adler, Liebman's son, was a noted architect and civil engineer who designed influential skyscrapers and mentored Frank Lloyd Wright.
^Navarro, Marisa (2001). "Stop the Music". Cyberesq. 4 (2): 18.
^ ab"Jeffrey D. Goldman". www.jmbm.com. JMBM. Archived from the original on 26 May 2012. Retrieved 26 January 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
^Falzone, Anthony. "The Two Faces of Perfect 10 v. Google". cyberlaw.stanford.edu. Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
