World Intellectual Property Day 2017: Innovation — Improving Lives

On October 21, 2016, Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden named Karyn Temple Acting Register of Copyrights while a national search is conducted for a new permanent Register of Copyrights. Temple had served as Associate Register of Copyrights and director of policy and international affairs for the United States Copyright Office since January 30, 2013. Prior to that, she served as senior counsel in the Office of Policy and International Affairs.

As Associate Register, she assisted the Register of Copyrights with critical policy functions of the Copyright Office, including domestic and international policy analyses, legislative support, and trade negotiations. She directed the Office of Policy and International Affairs, which represents the Copyright Office at meetings of government officials concerned with the international aspects of intellectual property protection, and she provided regular support to Congress and its committees on statutory amendments and construction.

Prior to joining the Copyright Office, Temple served as senior counsel to the deputy attorney general of the United States, assisting with the formulation of U.S. Department of Justice policy on sensitive legal issues and helping to manage the department’s Task Force on Intellectual Property. She also spent several years in private practice at the Recording Industry Association of America and at the law firm Williams & Connolly, LLP. She began her legal career as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division through its Honors Program and also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Nathaniel R. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Temple earned her JD from the Columbia University Law School, where she was a senior editor of the Columbia Law Review and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. She earned her BA in English from the University of Michigan.

A native of Gainesville, Georgia, Congressman Doug Collins saw public service modeled by his father, a Georgia State Trooper, and mother, who provided care to local senior citizens. After graduating from North Hall High School, Doug earned a degree in Political Science and Criminal Justice from the University of North Georgia. Even then, Doug took the vision and values of northeast Georgia to Washington as an intern in the House of Representatives.

Doug earned his master’s degree in divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and his community roots only deepened in the eleven years that he pastored Chicopee Baptist Church. In 2006, the people of Georgia’s 27th state house district elected Doug to represent them. During his first term in the state legislature, Doug graduated from Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School and established his own legal practice.

The work ethic and integrity that Doug shares with the people of northeast Georgia led him to serve as the Governor’s Floor Leader in the state house, where he shepherded legislation to strengthen the HOPE scholarship program for future generations of Georgia students.

In 2002, Doug joined the United States Air Force Reserve as a chaplain. He ministered to service members both at home and at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq, completing a combat tour in 2009. As the only chaplain in Congress, Doug continues to fight for religious liberty. When President Obama attempted to use the government shutdown to curb religious freedom by declaring military chaplains as non-essential, Doug offered legislation to allow chaplains of any faith to continue to serve military personnel. His resolution passed in the House by a vote of 400-1 in favor of protecting religious expression.

While Doug is an attorney, practicing military chaplain, and U.S. Representative, he remains foremost a husband to Lisa and father to daughter Jordan and sons Copelan and Cameron. Lisa is a lifelong educator in Georgia’s public schools, and together she and Doug have operated small businesses and remained actively involved at Lakewood Baptist Church.

In the 115th Congress, Doug serves as Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference after being elected to the leadership position by his fellow members of Congress. In this role, Doug works with the leadership team to support House Republicans in sharing the conservative message of compassion, fairness, and freedom with communities from shore to shore.

Doug also serves on both the House Judiciary and Rules Committees. He chairs the Rules’ Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House and is the Vice Chair of the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. In his role on the Rules Committee, Doug helps manage every piece of legislation that comes to the floor.

Keith Kupferschmid is chief executive officer of the Copyright Alliance. Before joining the Copyright Alliance, he served as general counsel and senior vice president for intellectual property at the Software and Information Industry Association. During his sixteen years there, he represented and advised member software and content companies on intellectual property policy, legal, and enforcement matters. He also supervised the association’s Anti-Piracy Division, including working with federal and state officials on civil and criminal piracy cases, and he testified before Congress and federal and state agencies. Earlier, Kupferschmid was an intellectual property attorney at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, and Dunner; an attorney-advisor at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; director of intellectual property protection at the Office of the United States Trade Representative; and policy planning advisor at the U.S. Copyright Office.

Steve Bogard has written ten number one country songs including George Strait’s “Carried Away” and “Carrying Your Love with Me” and Rascal Flatts’ career breaker, “Prayin’ For Daylight.” Bogard has won twenty ASCAP or BMI awards with hits and cuts by artists as diverse as Reba McEntire, Tanya Tucker, Patty Loveless, Etta James, The Four Tops, Sinead O’Connor, Jack Ingram, and Restless Heart. He has had two Grammy nominations for Best Country Song with Dierks Bentley and has produced nine major-label album projects for Arista, Virgin, Lyric Street, and Sony. Recent cuts include the number one song, “Seein’ Red”—the first single from Dustin Lynch’s upcoming album—and the critically acclaimed “When The Credits Roll” on George Strait’s recent number one album.

After successful early forays in the music markets of Memphis and Miami, Bogard was drawn to Nashville in 1983 when his song, “Touch Me with Magic,” became a top ten hit for Marty Robbins. He spent more than twenty years as a staff writer at Warner Chappell Music, has owned his own publishing company and independent record label, and is currently a staff writer at Magic Mustang Music, a division of the BBR Label Group.

Bogard was elected to the board of the Nashville Songwriter’s Association International more than fifteen years ago, and he served an unprecedented seven years as NSAI’s Board President. During that time, he worked closely with the NMPA, DiMA, the RIAA, BMI and ASCAP, and SESAC on legislation affecting songwriters’ rights and income in the digital space, covering subscription services, interactive streaming, satellite radio, and future digital uses of music. He was the witness representing songwriters at the last and now the current Copyright Royalty Board rate setting proceeding and was the Director of The Copyright Forum at Belmont University.

Bogard currently serves as ex-officio advisor to the Board of NSAI and on the board of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Foundation and MyWerx—voted one of Billboard Magazine’s top ten tech startups of 2010. A former Board Member of the CMA and the Academy of Country Music, he is a 1995 graduate of Leadership Music, served on ASCAP's Southern Writer's Advisory Board, and has hosted the ASCAP Song Seminar. He is a member of both the Producers and Engineers and the Composers Wing of NARAS, The Recording Academy.

Jason King is a musician, DJ, performer, producer, arranger and songwriter, scholar, curator, and journalist. He is associate professor and the founding faculty member of The Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, an innovative leadership training program for aspiring music entrepreneurs at Tisch School of the Arts. He worked alongside legendary music impresario Clive Davis to help build and develop the program and has served many roles there. He brought numerous guests to the school, including Pharrell Williams, De La Soul, Gamble & Huff, Phil Ramone, Alicia Keys, Russell Simmons, and Swizz Beats. King has also been an affiliated faculty member at New York University programs in Abu Dhabi and Singapore.

Outside of his role at the university, King hosts CNN’s weekly podcast series Soundtracks The B Side and NPR’s podcast Noteworthy. He also is the curator and on-air host of NPRandB, NPR’s R&B streaming radio channel. As creative director of his own entertainment company, Superlatude, King has consulted for record labels, branding, and marketing firms. He has served as a music marketing and branding expert in high-profile copyright infringement cases for artists including Jay-Z, Timbaland, Madonna, Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, and Kanye West. He founded the innovative New York-based dance music superband Company Freak, featuring original lead singers of Chic Norma Jean Wright and Alfa Anderson and Hubert Eaves of D-Train. He produced or coproduced the 2014 Club Classics Live! concert extravaganza at Central Park Summerstage, the EMP Pop Conference in March 2012, and a two-day event,“The Making of Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions.”

King has been a longtime music critic and journalist for magazines like Vibe, The Village Voice, and The Los Angeles Times, among others. He has also excelled as a playwright and director in theater, including the Crossroads Theater Company and New Perspectives. He is the author of The Michael Jackson Treasures, a 2009 Barnes and Noble exclusive biography on the King of Pop, and Blue Magic, a book on the role of metaphysics and energy in the music of artists like Timbaland, forthcoming from Duke University Press. He is currently delving into directing and producing documentaries and television, and he is at work on a revisionist biography of Freddie Mercury.

Eric Schwartz is a partner with Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP (MSK). He has more than twenty-five years of experience as a copyright attorney providing counseling on U.S. and foreign copyright laws, focusing on rights, exceptions, ownership and licensing issues, and enforcement matters. He also serves as a transactional attorney experienced in the production, distribution, and financing of musical recordings and feature and documentary films.

Schwartz served as chief production counsel for the PBS series Soundbreaking—an eight hour documentary about the history of recorded music (the legacy project of legendary producer Sir George Martin). The series aired nationwide in November 2016, and has been broadcast in many territories abroad. In addition to serving as counsel, he is credited as producer for higher ground for his assistance with the production. He was primarily responsible for negotiating and drafting the talent agreements with more than 200 recording industry luminaries such as Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Perry, Tom Petty, Elton John, Smokey Robinson, and many others. Along with other MSK counsel, he negotiated the music and more than 150 archival agreements for all moving image, artwork, and still photographic material used in the series.

Schwartz is an expert on film and recorded music archival legal and preservation issues. For more than twenty years, he has served on the Library of Congress’ film and recorded sound preservation boards, and he helped found the National Film Preservation Foundation in 1997. He is also an adjunct professor of copyright law and international copyright law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a visiting lecturer at other law schools. Prior to private practice, he served as a senior attorney and Acting General Counsel at the U.S. Copyright Office.