Date: Friday, June 25, 2021, 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST
Webinar Description:
Within the past few months, the art market has seen an unprecedented boom of so-called NFT art. Once on the fringe of the art industry, cryptoartists are now selling their works at large auction house for millions of dollars. From the perspective of practitioners and law professors, this panel will discuss how NFTs work and the legal and regulatory issues underly this evolving technology.
Learning Objectives:
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Emily Behzadi, J.D., Assistant Professor of Law, California Western School of Law
Professor Emily Behzadi’s research and teaching interests are in the fields of art and cultural heritage law. With a background in art history, Professor Behzadi’s research focuses on the interdisciplinary connection between the law and the arts within a national and international framework. Her current work explores issues of restitution and the prohibition against the destruction of cultural heritage as developing norms of customary international law. She seeks to expand her research to cultural heritage issues and disputes arising in Latin America, as they relate to U.S. law and policy. Professor Behzadi has published in the Journal of International Law and International Relations (peer reviewed), George Mason International Law Journal, and the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal.
Prior to joining the faculty at California Western School of Law, Professor Behzadi was an Adjunct Professor at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University College of Law and Barry University, Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law. As an attorney, Professor Behzadi practiced in the areas of art and entertainment law, including intellectual property, contracts, immigration, and civil litigation. Professor Behzadi is the Chair of the ABA Young Lawyers Division Entertainment and Sports Law Committee. Professor Behzadi is also the Vice-Chair of the International Division of the ABA Forum on the Entertainment & Sports Industries. She also serves as an Associate Editor of ABA TYL Journal. Professor Behzadi was recognized as one of the ABA’s “40 Top Young Lawyers” and one of the Orlando Business Journal’s 40 under 40.
Emilio Cazares, J.D., Chief Legal Officer, SuperRare
Emilio Cazares is a the Chief Legal Officer at SuperRare specializing in intellectual property, digital copyright, and distributed ledger technology. Emilio provides analysis, advice, and strategic counseling for companies deploying blockchain solutions, including in the growing crypto digital art industry. He has advised clients exploring stablecoin offerings, ledger analytics, and Dapp solutions, including technical and legal insight into securities and financial compliance issues. Emilio is a firm believer in the potential of decentralized business solution and is familiar with both the technological and legal issues that are implicated by this disruptive and often misunderstood technology. He co-founded the San Diego Blockchain Forum, an educational organization exploring the intersection between blockchain technology, law, economics, and culture.
Pamela M. Deese, J.D., Partner, Arent Fox
Pamela Deese’s intellectual property representation includes counseling patent pools and other IP owners in developing and maintaining strategic licensing programs as well as maintaining IP portfolios. Her work also includes advertising review and litigation for consumer products companies. Among other things, she provides counsel with respect to the creation, negotiation and enforcement of licenses and related agreements, management of worldwide IP rights, as well as representation involving counterfeiting issues, privacy, sweepstakes and promotions, celebrity endorsements, and litigating related business disputes.
Pam also serves as an adjunct member of the faculty of American University’s Washington College of Law, where she teaches IP Licensing. She is active in numerous professional associations. She holds membership in the American Bar Association’s Science and Technology and Intellectual Property Law sections, the District of Columbia Bar Association, and the Pennsylvania Bar Association. Additionally, she is a member of the NY Intellectual Property Lawyers Association, the Intellectual Property Owner’s Association, and the Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association. She served as Vice Chair of the ABA Section of Science and Technology, Committee on Technical Standardization and Infrastructure for a decade and on the Licensing Journal’s Editorial Board and as the Trademark Licensing Columnist for nearly twenty years.
Zahr K. Said, J.D., Ph.D, Associate Dean of Research & Faculty Development Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law
Professor Zahr K. Said is the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Charles I. Stone Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law. Said holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University, a J.D. from Columbia (where she was a Kent Scholar and served as Articles Editor for the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts) and a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa). She taught at the University of Virginia School of Law for three years as a Visiting Professor of Law, and was a Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School in 2018. Said’s research applies humanistic methods, theories, and texts to problems in legal doctrine and policy. Her work has appeared in the Lewis and Clark Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Stanford Technology Law Review, and the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts, among others. Current works in progress examine the role of the jury in copyright law and jury instructions in copyright litigation. Said has also undertaken a qualitative empirical study of the craft brewing scene in Seattle to map its attitudes and norms around creation, collaboration, sharing, and IP enforcement. She is the recipient of the UW Law Faculty Scholarship Award (2015), the Philip A. Trautman 1L Professor of the Year Award (2016), and the UW University Global Innovation Fund Grant. She teaches Torts, Copyright, and Advanced Copyright, and she has taught Advertising as well as the Proseminar for Ph.D. students, which is an introduction to American jurisprudence.
Natasha N. Varyani, J.D., Associate Professor of Law, New England Law
Professor Varyani teaches in the areas of Property Law, Contracts, Tax, and Critical Theory. She rejoined the full-time faculty of New England Law after establishing the Academic Enrichment Program at Boston University School of Law, where she also taught in the areas of Property and Contracts.
Professor Varyani comes to academia after approximately a decade of private practice, where she worked on complex tax planning and litigation. She is committed to helping ensure her students are practice-ready upon graduation. She has demonstrated a strong commitment to the effort of diversity in the legal profession and has served in leadership roles in affinity bar associations at both local and national levels, as well as working closely with the Boston Bar Association in their efforts on the Committee for Diversity & Inclusion. She currently serves as co-director of the law school’s Charles Hamilton Houston Enrichment Program.
