“Legal Issues Underlying Efforts to Create a New Future for Media”

Kurt Wimmer is a partner concentrating on media law and intellectual property at the Washington, D.C., firm of Covington & Burlington LLP, which represents companies in the digital media, television, mobile, publication and new technology sectors. His work includes intellectual property protection and strategy; content liability and newsgathering advice and litigation; television and digital content licensing transactions; privacy and data protection; and international law and public policy representation of companies and associations before the U.S. Congress, Federal Communications Commission and international governmental entities. He was senior vice president and general counsel of Gannett Co. Inc. from 2006-09 and managing partner of Covington’s London office from 2000-03. Wimmer’s clients have included Microsoft, Yahoo!, The Washington Post Co., Newsweek, National Geographic and Gannett. He has advised journalists, associations and legislators in more than two dozen countries concerning new media laws, protection of journalists and freedom of information. Wimmer is on the boards of the Media Law Resource Center, The Media Institute, the ABA Forum on Communications Law and the Citizens Media Law Project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.The Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics and the Media (IJPM) at Syracuse University has announced its Spring 2010 lecture series on “Law, Politics and the Media.”Today’s American judicial system operates in a complex environment of legal principle, political pressure and media coverage. The series provides an introduction to the court system and its environment as a single, integrated subject of study and features speakers from a variety of legal, political and media backgrounds, including practicing lawyers, published authors, leading scholars and court researchers. “Law, Politics and the Media” lectures are free and open to the public. They take place from 3:50–5:10 p.m. in Room 204 of the Syracuse University College of Law. Paid parking is available in SU pay lots.The lecture series is part of an interdisciplinary course on law, politics and the media cross-listed between the College of Law, the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The course is taught by SU professors Keith Bybee (IJPM director) and Roy Gutterman (IJPM associate director), and funded through support from the John Ben Snow Foundation and the Carnegie Corp. of New York.