Attorney Profile

 

Admitted
1985, New York; 1986, U.S. District Court, Southern and Eastern Districts of New York

Law School
Yale University, J.D.

Member
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Member:  Copyright and Literary Property Committee, 1993-1996, 2002-2005, 2006-2009, 2012-2015; 2018-2023; Trademark and Unfair Competition Committee, 2009-2012, 2015-2018; Information Technology Law Committee, 1999-2002; Entertainment Law Committee, 1996-1999; Ad Hoc Information Superhighway Working Group, 1993-1994); New York State Bar Association (Member: Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section; Former Member, Committee on Literary Works and Related Rights); American Bar Association (Former Member, Section on Intellectual Property Law; Chair, Subcommittee on Joint Works and Works for Hire, 1998; Member, Subcommittee on Formalities, 1997-1998); Copyright Society of the U.S.A.; Princeton University History Department Advisory Council (2000-2004).

Biography
Co-author: “A Lawyer’s Ramble Down the Information Superhighway,” 54 Fordham L. Rev. 700 (1995).  General Counsel, Jobson Healthcare Information, LLC, 2005-2019. Born: New York, N.Y., May 4, 1959

Languages
Hebrew, some French, some very basic Russian conversation

After graduating from Princeton University in 1981 (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and from Yale Law School in 1984, and after spending a year in Israel, Jessica Friedman started her career in the fall of 1985 as an associate with the Wall Street firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where she did commercial litigation.

In January 1989, she became an associate at Linden and Deutsch, which later became Deutsch Klagsbrun & Blasband. There, she represented clients in copyright and trademark infringement litigation, including the plaintiffs in Childress v. Taylor, 945 F.2d 500 (2d Cir. 1991) (joint works) and Branch v. Ogilvy & Mather, 16 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1179 (S.D.N.Y. 1990) (total look and feel), and defendant Houghton Mifflin in Eisen, Durwood & Co., Inc. v. Tolkien, 794 F. Supp. 85 (S.D.N.Y. 1992), aff’d, 990 F.2d 623 (2d Cir. 1993), which held that the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy had not fallen into the public domain in the United States. She also handled various kinds of entertainment transactions, from book publishing to music publishing and theatre, and helped build up the firm’s growing trademark practice.

Ms. Friedman left Deutsch Klagsbrun & Blasband in the fall of 1993 to build up her own practice. Her clients included book and magazine publishers, as well as individual creators, and she expanded her practice to include advertising matters. In addition, she began to represent Internet start-ups and to handle electronic licensing, domain name disputes, and other Internet/new media matters.

In January 1999, she became counsel to the entertainment firm of Leavy, Rosensweig & Hyman, providing niche expertise in the still-new area of Internet law. When that firm dissolved in December 1999, Ms. Friedman moved to Reboul, MacMurray, Hewitt, Maynard & Kristol. There, as the firm’s sole intellectual-property attorney, she worked with the firm’s corporate attorneys on venture-capital and M&A deals; handled software licenses and hosting, network and other technology agreements for the firm’s hi-tech clients; and continued her practice in literary property and other areas for other clients.

In February 2003, shortly before Reboul, MacMurray merged with Ropes & Gray, she opened this office, which offers the benefit of her almost 30 years in these fields to clients of all sizes, but in particular to smaller companies and individuals who want individual attention and an alternative to big-firm rates and fee structures. In addition, from January 2005 to January 2019, she served as part-time General Counsel to Jobson Healthcare Information LLC, which is now part of WebMD, and in 2010, she became counsel to the Paul Ellis Law Group (https://www.pelglaw.com), where she continues to work on intellectual property, software, privacy, and other matters.

Ms. Friedman has two sons, Aron (31) and Jonah (26), who keep her on her toes even though they are both out of the house. Now happily (re)married, she has been thrilled to spend several weeks a year skiing out west with her husband and their ski group  (at least, until she tore her ACL in Telluride in February 2024). She looks forward to spending time at their house in Woodstock, NY and to traveling to   Zambia and Alaska in the summer of 2024.  At home, she reads a lot, prepares to leyn (read Torah) in two different congregations, watches the Knicks and the Giants, and works out while watching Netflix series that most people have already seen.