Hey class,

Hope you all had a great long weekend!

Our guest speaker this week is Patrick Sweeney, counsel with Reed Smith and based out of Century City.

Mr. Sweeney’s experience prior to joining Reed Smith includes serving as senior corporate counsel at Vivendi Universal Games and at Paramount Pictures Television Group. He was also general counsel for video game publisher Brash Entertainment LLC. At Brash, part of his work included negotiating game development agreements and license agreements with movie studios. Mr. Sweeney also has experience teaching: his video game law class at Southwestern Law School was the first American law school course dedicated to the subject.

Mr. Sweeney is currently with Reed Smith’s Corporate & Securities Group, where he continues his work representing developers, publishers, intellectual property owners, and technology providers. He is also on the Law Firm Advisory Board for the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel and is a board member for the Video Game Bar Association.

Mr. Sweeney’s profile on the Reed Smith site can be found here: http://www.reedsmith.com/patrick_sweeney/

More information on Mr. Sweeney’s work experience can be found here: http://www.reedsmith.com/Reed-Smith-Adds-Patrick-Sweeney-as-Counsel-in-Century-City—Experienced-video-game-lawyer-joins-Corporate-and-Securities-Group-05-24-2010/

UPDATE: Mr. Sweeney will be speaking to us about common terms in developer/publisher contracts, starting with ‘traditional’ deals and moving onto how changes in business models and platforms have impacted contract terms and priorities.

See you all on Wednesday!

– Zoe and Aaron

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