Media lawyers in Washington

Firm: Hughes Media Law Group

2003 Western Avenue, Suite 460 , Seattle , Washington 98121

Practice Areas: Business, Internet, Contracts, Entertainment, Media, Lawsuits & Disputes, Intellectual Property

.. EXCEPTIONAL LEGAL AND BUSINESS AFFAIRS SERVICES, ADVICE AND CREATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR EMERGING BUSINESSES AND ESTABLISHED CORPORATIONS. Joleen Winther Hughes founded HMLG specifically to support entrepreneurs and inventors, both big and small, with new business ventures, business and legal strategy and burgeoning media properties, products and services. As a longtime entrepreneur herself, Joleen understands the trials and tribulations of starting and running a successful business and how to allocate and assess risk to get products and services to market.. Joleen takes pride in providing legal and business advice to clients to help transform a good idea into a sustainable company. She has set HMLG up specifically to enable clients to set and maintain workable legal budgets and to depend on great communication and interaction with her extraordinary legal team.. Joleen has many years of experience providing high-level in house counsel level service to a diverse range of clients, including MobiTV, Agility Studios, ZeptoLab (Cut the Rope), , OnCam, Paramount Digital Entertainment, Big Fish Games, Sanjaya Malakar, DIY Media, Amazon, Yamaha, LXD, Lima Sky (Doodle Jump), r2integrated; Votiv Inc; 360 Solutions, Brightcove, 206 Inc., iFilm, GetBack Media, PulpLab; SpinKix, Music Interactive, Corbis, Microsoft, Flying Spot Entertainment Group, Wet Paint, Cascade Game Foundry, Smartbomb Interactive, Jivox, Zango, Ooyala, Common Craft, Square Enix, Playmous (Tap the Frog), the Yellow Leaf Cupcake Company, Lisa Amore Public Relations, No Depression, Alina's Cucina, and Digital Sidebar, to name a few.. Before embarking in private practice, Joleen provided a broad array of business and legal affairs services for RealNetworks’ global media operations and participated in the company’s largest transactions in the consumer services/digital media space including forming MusicNet, the first legal multi-label music distribution initiative, putting together the first VOD digital movie subscription service, and drafting and negotiating agreements with major sports leagues, media companies, television networks, movie studios and record labels to create the first on-line consumer content subscription products and services.. Joleen began her entrepreneurial career in the music industry, where she owned a successful artist management, talent booking, concert production, and special event business during the height of the Seattle "grunge" music explosion for clients including RKCNDY nightclub, Susan Silver and Kelly Curtis Management (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees), Media One, Monqui/SLA, The Pioneer Square Pub Club and The University of Washington.. Joleen also currently co-owns the Celtic Swell Irish Pub & Restaurant with her husband, located on Alki Beach in Seattle, Washington and CS Finnegan’s Irish House, located in Seattle’s famed Belltown neighborhood.

Firm: Phinney Black LLP

1100 Bellevue Way NE, #8A-914 , Bellevue , Washington 98004

Practice Areas: Contracts, Licensing, Intellectual Property, Media, Corporate, Contracts & Agreements, Contracts & Agreements, Contracts & Agreements, Contracts & Agreements

Neal Black is a partner at Phinney Black, where he focuses on advising clients in the software industry and interactive media industry, including designers, creators, and operators of hosted software solutions, embedded software solutions, middleware, platforms, AI solutions, video games, online games, VR games, mobile games, mobile applications, casual and social games, virtual worlds, and other creative and innovative works. Neal also serves investors in early rounds of financing.. Before joining Phinney Black, Neal was Vice President and General Counsel of Square Enix, a global developer and publisher of interactive entertainment content. Neal managed the legal affairs of Square Enix’s North American subsidiaries, including UIEvolution, a leading developer of middleware for cross-platform distribution of apps, data, and content. For a two-year period in 2008 and 2009, Neal was Vice President and General Counsel of Live Gamer (now known as Emergent Payments), a provider of e-commerce solutions for online games, virtual worlds, social networks, and other virtual environments, including publisher-sanctioned marketplaces for virtual items and virtual currencies.. At Phinney Black, Neal works directly with the CEOs, CFOs, and in-house legal departments of established companies, start-ups, and early-round investors. He provides a wide range of services, including senior management over complex legal matters, such as interactive software product releases; negotiation of complex legal relationships with customers, contractors, publishers, developers, vendors, suppliers, and other business partners; negotiation of stock purchase and related investor agreements; and providing business-oriented counseling to executive management teams on a full range of other legal matters. Among other things, Neal understands the laws governing software development, content creation, IP licensing, AI models, user-generated content, privacy and data security, virtual goods, virtual currencies, and ownership of virtual property.. Neal received an undergraduate degree in engineering from Stanford University and his JD from Georgetown University. He has taught intellectual-property and business law courses as an adjunct professor at Seattle University and a part-time lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law, where he lectured on emerging legal issues in video games and virtual worlds.. Neal was born on Adak Island, Alaska, which, in case you didn’t know, is located in the middle of the Bering Sea at the far southwestern tip of the Aleutian Islands. He grew up in Prineville, Oregon, and now lives in the decidedly more urban environment of Kirkland, Washington, where he and his wife, Joanna, raised their two sons. Neal also volunteers in the community as an elected member of the City Council for the City of Kirkland. He was first elected to the Council in 2019 and was re-elected in 2021. And, he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the King County Bar Association (2018-2023 and 2024-Present) and a former chair of that organization's Public Policy Committee (2014-2019).