Rachel Wilkes Barchie

Contact Rachel

If there’s any pattern in my blog posts, it’s that they are often inspired by my real-life experiences. This one is no different. Recently, I arrived home around 9 p.m. and was greeted by the sound of machine-gun fire that sounded like it was coming from across the street. My husband was out watching a football game (the rival team I poked fun at here) so I had nobody to confirm if there was, in fact, urban warfare taking over the mean streets of Hancock Park, or if it was jut my imagination. The sound continued intermittently every 15–20 minutes for the next hour, with me jumping out of my seat every time (and our cat jumping out of his seat in the window), until my husband got home and confirmed that it was neither my imagination nor an uprising of disgruntled Larchmont Village bakery-goers: a movie was being filmed on the next block over. Sure enough, I seem to have ignored the giant light hovering over the block, which was so bright it could have lit an entire football field for a nighttime game.

The next morning, I drove by to check it out, and saw the block lined with 1940’s-style cars, including a police car and an ambulance. Some Internet sleuthing revealed that the movie being filmed was Gangster Squad, a period piece slated to come out in 2012 with a star-studded cast including Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, and Sean Penn.

My first thought, of course, was, Cool! Maybe I can go stroll by after work and get a glimpse of the filming!

My second thought, since I am obviously a law dork, was, I wonder whether the neighbors have any rights with regard to the movie being filmed there? Continue reading the full story . . . »

Rachel Wilkes Barchie

Contact Rachel

This blogger knows a little something about name changes, since I am in the process of changing from my maiden name to my married name (and still receiving almost daily emails saying “Rachel who???”). As I learned in the days leading up to the wedding, in California, when you get married you have a few options as far as changing your name. The wife can take her husband’s last name, the husband can take his wife’s last name, or both people can change their last name to some combination of the two. (I lobbied halfheartedly for “Wilchie,” but no dice.)

Outside of the marriage context, however, formal name changes must be done in court. While this certainly allows for more variety and creativity in the selection of a new name, the statutory name change process is more intricate. Among other things, it requires publishing notice of the requested name change in the newspaper for four weeks, ostensibly to give potential creditors and interested government officials an opportunity to discover any nefarious attempts to avoid them by changing one’s name. (L.A. Laker Ron Artest’s name change to “Metta World Peace” — really — was initially delayed by outstanding parking tickets.) Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to any enterprising legislator to revise the law to allow name-changers to Tweet their new names, or post them to Facebook or Google+.

Even in the absence of a formal name change, you can always ask people to call you whatever you desire, a request that lawyers have jargonistically dubbed a “common law” name change. (For example, I’ve told my colleagues who can’t deal with my new last name that they may now refer to me as “The attorney formerly known as Wilkes.”) But even in Hollywood, the land of self-invention and reinvention — where celebrities name their children after everything from fruit to superheroes — there is still a limit as to what people can legally call themselves. Just ask cannabis activist, convicted felon, perennial candidate for New Jersey political office, and Los Angeles transplant Robert Edward (“Ed”) Forchion, Jr., who learned firsthand last month that the sky’s not the limit when it comes to statutory name changes in California, when the Second Appellate District affirmed the denial of his petition to change his personal name to the name of his website, NJweedman.com. Continue reading the full story . . . »

Jesse Saivar

Contact Jesse

Q: I’d like to use some audio from an old radio show. My research so far reveals the show…like many old radio shows…was never copyrighted. How does one determine the copyright status of something like a radio show?

A: Let’s first talk about where copyright law is today with respect to the need for copyright registrations. Remember those old SAT questions where they asked you to find the two pairs of things that were most alike? Well, under current U.S. copyright law, copyright registrations are to copyright owners as permanently affixed Bluetooth earpieces are to morons. You don’t have to have a copyright registration to be a copyright owner, but if you do have a registration, you’ve put the public on notice that you are, indeed, a copyright owner. Continue reading the full story . . . »

Rachel Wilkes Barchie

Contact Rachel

Ever since the calendar flipped into 2011, we the people have been flooded with half-headlines about Republican candidates-in-waiting who may or may not be running for president in 2012. And now that Barack Obama has (surprise!) announced his intention to run for re-election, people are more interested than ever to learn who might be opposing him.

Because no one necessarily wants to be the first out of the gate — and therefore, perhaps, the first subject to stringent regulations governing candidates for federal office — the statements have been comically non-committal, if not borderline impossible to parse. Last month, Newt Gingrich declared that he was “excited about exploring whether there is sufficient support for my potential candidacy for president of this exceptional country.” (Super.) A couple weeks ago Tim Pawlenty boldly declared on Piers Morgan Tonight, “I’m running for president!” — after which his spokesman announced that no decision had been made, and that Pawlenty’s people had “expressed our displeasure” with CNN for “report[ing] the full quote out of context.” (Thanks for clearing that up.) Obviously, we can assume that any presidential announcement is “not intended to be a factual statement.”

But no one has played the game of am-I-or-aren’t-I-running better than Donald Trump, whose presidential ambitions have been the subject of rampant speculation since last fall. Trump has made many comments about his potential Presidential bid, and has even been endorsed by Gary Busey (umm…good for him?). Last Friday, Trump’s spokesman made the following announcement:

On the May 22 season finale of Celebrity Apprentice, Mr. Trump may announce the time and place of a press conference at which time he will make a statement as to whether or not he will run for president of the United States.

In other words, on April 15, Trump announced that, on May 22, he may announce the future time and date at which he may announce that he’s running for president (in an election that’s taking place 19 months from now). It was an announcement of a potential announcement about another announcement. I’m not certain, but this may have ripped a hole in the space-time-logic continuum.

But this is an entertainment law blog, not a political blog. So I won’t use this blog post to poke fun at Donald Trump Republicans our political system (Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do such a good job already). Instead I’m going to talk about how The Donald’s candidacy would affect his hit reality TV show, The [optional: Celebrity] Apprentice. (The same issue would have arisen with Sarah Palin’s Alaska had that show not been — *emo tear* —canceled after its first season in January. And people say Americans have no taste in television.) Continue reading the full story . . . »