Media and entertainment

Andy is a partner in the corporate group, he is also head of the media and music sector. He deals with a range of corporate law matters including acquisitions and sales of companies and businesses, investments, reorganisations, shareholder agreements and exits and general advisory work. Andy also specialises in music and media including recording and publishing contracts, management agreements and general music industry advisory work. In addition, he deals with agreements in respect of the exploitation of intellectual property rights, terms of business, book publishing, digital rights and management.

John’s main areas of expertise are intellectual property exploitation, franchising, brand licensing, commercial agreements, competition law, sports and media. His uncluttered and commercially focused approach has won him praise when dealing with high profile, high value matters. John is an established speaker at various brand licensing seminars both in the UK and abroad and is a director of the Manchester Fashion Network.

 Sean Crotty is a partner in our commercial team with particular experience in data protection, IT, commercial, procurement and intellectual property matters. Sean advises many high profile clients within the private (ranging from SMEs to listed companies) and public sector (including Police Authorities, NHS Trusts, local authorities and universities) on a wide range of strategic and complex data, IT, media and IP issues. Sean has developed a specialism in drafting and negotiating major commercial, IT, entertainment, IP and data contracts within the private and public sector. He understands his way around the relevant industries and their statutory obligations and often provides training in relation to the same. Examples of his work in this area include advising: Peel Ports Group on procurement of works and services for £350 million Liverpool 2 Project; One of the world’s largest packaging companies on a large scale production agreement; A national fraud body on a standard user agreement for the insurance industry (including data sharing arrangements, database use and use of strategic data on an international scale); Upon the £multimillion procurement of a major police force’s content management system; and The Motor Insurers’ Bureau in relation to the UK Government backed MyLicence Project, a revolutionary data sharing project between the DVLA and the UK insurance industry. Sean has vast experience of the video games industry and was awarded the legal services provider of the year award at the TIGA Awards 2016 in recognition of the excellent work provided by his team in the field. Sean also regularly delivers presentations in this field (eg. International Festival of Business 2016) and is regularly published in trade and national press (eg. Financial Times, IP Magazine and Daily Telegraph). Sean is recommended in Legal 500.

Partner: Laura is a Partner in Lewis Silkin's Digital, Commerce and Creative team and is based in Manchester. Laura advises the creative industries and innovation businesses on commercial agreements and IP strategy. She has a wealth of experience in complex copyright, trade mark, design & patent issues notably across the games, communications, fashion, and TV sectors.

Partner

Rebecca is a Partner at JMW and heads up the Media and Reputation Management team.  Rebecca’s team provide specialist media and reputation management advice to clients predominantly based in the UK.  The team is known for working collaboratively with clients’ PR teams and key stakeholders to manage, often at short notice, reputational or privacy issues.  The team has considerable experience in dealing with the Media and in injunctive matters. Rebecca is known for being dedicated to assisting her clients to enforce their legal rights, to defend their legal position and to achieve positive outcomes.

Associate Partner