June M. Besek
Ms. Besek is the Executive Director and Director of Studies at the Kernochan Center. She oversees studies on national and international intellectual property issues. She was formerly Director of Intellectual Property at Reuters America Inc. and, before that, a partner at Schwab Goldberg Price & Dannay in New York. She is an active member of the ABA Intellectual Property Section and the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. She received her B.A. from Yale and J.D. from New York University.


Steven Chaikelson
Mr. Chaikelson was the first official graduate of Columbia University's joint-degree program in law and theatre management. He has managed and produced theatrical productions on and off-Broadway and across the United States. Mr. Chaikelson's broadway theatre management credits include Elaine Stritch At Liberty, 2002; George Gershwin Alone, 2001; A Moon for the Misbegotten, 2000; The Price, 1999-2000; Death of a Salesman (Broadway and Showtime productions, starring Brian Dennehy), 1999; Fool Moon, 1995 and 1998; Freak, 1998; Julia Sweeney's God Said Ha!, 1996. Company Manager for Walt Disney Theatrical Productions / The Lion King, 1997-1998. He has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor and Theatre Management Program Coordinator for the Columbia University School of the Arts since 1998. His article on the 42nd Street Development Project has been published in the Columbia-VLA Journal of Law & the Arts. He received his A.B. from Columbia College in 1989, his M.F.A. from Columbia in 1993 and his J.D. from Columbia in 1993.


Edward J. Klaris
Mr. Klaris is the general counsel of The New Yorker. He is responsible for all intellectual property, First Amendment, privacy, newsgathering, licensing, publishing and Internet-related legal matters for the magazine as well as for the magazine's editorial and e-commerce websites. Prior to joining The New Yorker, Mr. Klaris was counsel at ABC, Inc. where he handled media law, intellectual property and FCC matters for ABC News, ABC-owned TV and radio stations, ABC Entertainment and ABCNews.com. He started his legal career working at what is now Davis Wright Tremaine in New York, where he primarily represented media defendants in libel, privacy and intellectual property litigations. Mr. Klaris is the Chair of the Committee on Media Law of the New York State Bar Association; he is on the Governing Committee of the ABA Forum on the Entertainment & Sports Industries; he is Chair of the Editorial Subcommittee of the Magazine Publishers Association Legal Affairs Committee; he is on the board of the Medial Law Resource Center Institute; and he is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Pilobolus Dance Theatre. Mr. Klaris lectures regularly around the country and has been published in both legal and mainstream publications. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar College and was the Editor-in-Chief of the Arts & Entertainment Law Journal at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where he earned his J.D.


I. Fred Koenigsberg
Mr. Koenigsberg is a partner at White & Case, LLP, concentrating in copyright law, including counseling and litigation. Mr. Koenigsberg was named by the United States Department of State to the Ad Hoc Working Group on U.S. Adherence to the Berne Convention, was a member of the National Committee for the Berne Convention, and the Advisory Committee on Copyright Registration and Deposit (ACCORD) of the Library of Congress and was a private sector representative on the United States delegation to the diplomatic conference on the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Mr. Koenigsberg is Counsel to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and advises the Society and its Board of Directors on all matters as its chief legal officer. Mr. Koenigsberg also represents the Walt Disney Company, BMG Music, Inc., Demart Pro Arte B.V. (owner of all intellectual property rights of Salvador Dalí) and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company among many other clients, advising as to copyright matters. Mr. Koenigsberg was named as one of New York's Leading Intellectual Property Lawyers in the 2003-2004 edition of Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers.


Henry Lebowitz
Mr. Lebowitz is a partner resident in the law firm of Fried Frank in New York City. He joined the firm in 2004. He concentrates his practice in the field of intellectual property law with a focus on patent law in the electrical and mechanical fields. His practice includes litigation, transactional work and counseling in those areas.

Mr. Lebowitz was a partner at Pennie & Edmonds LLP from 2002 to 2003, and before that an associate at the firm from 1996 to 2002. Previously, he served as a law clerk to the Hon. Raymond C. Clevenger, III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit from 1995 to 1996. He served as a patent examiner in the United States Patent and Trademark Office from 1990 to 1992. Mr. Lebowitz is a member of the American Bar Association and the Association of Former Law Clerks and Technical Advisors of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Mr. Lebowitz received his JD in 1995 from Columbia University School of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review. He received his BS from Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1989.

Mr. Lebowitz is admitted to the bar in New York and to practice before the United States District Court for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York; the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.


Richard Z. Lehv
Mr. Lehv is partner at Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu, P.C., practicing in Litigation of trademark, copyright, false advertising, and unfair competition cases in federal trial and appeals courts; opposition and cancellation proceedings in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Significant experience with issues related to comparative advertising, the entertainment industry (such as protection of film titles), use of surveys in litigation, Internet-related issues; and parody and First Amendment issues. Mr. Lehv holds a J.D. from Columbia University and a B.A. from Union College.


Jane A. Levine
Ms. Levine is an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Ms. Levine is a Special Trial Attorney assigned by the Department of Justice to work with the FBI's national Art Crime Team. Since 1996, Ms. Levine has prosecuted numerous complex criminal and civil matters involving art and antiquities, including United States v. Sakhai, 05 Cr. 583 (LAP), an wide-reaching international art forgery scheme. She has written several published articles on international trafficking in stolen art and artifacts. Ms. Levine received a B.A. from Brown University (1981) and her J.D. from New York University School of Law (1985).


Hillel I. Parness
Mr. Parness, a 1995 graduate of Columbia Law School, is Of Counsel to Lovells in New York. Before joining Lovells, he was an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (1995-2000) and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP (2000-2001), and Counsel at Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner LLP (2001-2006). He has published numerous articles and speaks regularly on Internet and intellectual property issues.


Robert D. Sack
Mr. Sack is a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of his appointment in 1998, he was in private law practice as a partner in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Judge Sack received his B.A. degree from the University of Rochester in 1960, and his LL.B. degree from Columbia Law School in 1963.

Judge Sack was law clerk for Judge Arthur Lane of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey from 1963 until 1964. He went into the private practice of law in 1964 with the New York firm of Patterson, Belknap & Webb, which later became Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, initially as an associate and later as a partner. During 1974 he took time from his practice to serve as Associate Special Counsel and Senior Associate Special Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment inquiry. In 1986, Judge Sack joined the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher as a partner, a position at which he remained until his appointment as a Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1998.

Judge Sack is the author of Sack on Defamation: Libel, Slander, and Related Problems (3rd edition, 1999), and he is the co-author of Advertising and Commercial Speech: A First Amendment Guide (1999). Most recently, his article, Protection of Opinion Under the First Amendment: Reflection on Alfred Hill, "Defamation and Privacy Under the First Amendment," was published in the 100th Anniversary issue of the Columbia Law Review.

Judge Sack is a director of the William F. Kerby and Robert S. Potter Fund, which assists in funding the legal defense of journalists abroad. He is a member of the advisory boards of the Bureau of National Affairs' Media Law Reporter and the American Bar Association Forum Committee's Communications Lawyer. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of the Columbia Law School, and he was a member of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University Seminars on Media and Society. He was Chair of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. He is also a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School. A member of the American Bar Association, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the American Judicature Society, he is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.


John Sare
Mr. Sare is a partner at Millbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP in its Trusts & Estates Department. He represents individuals, fiduciaries and tax-exempt organizations and has worked extensively on matters involving art law. Mr. Sare received his law degree from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was an editor of The Columbia-VLA Journal of Law and the Arts and was for three years a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Mr. Sare received his B.A., summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He has served as secretary of the Committee on Non-Profit Organizations of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and has also served on that Association's Committee on Art Law. He is the author of the legal chapter of Starting Your Private Foundation, a book published by the National Center for Family Philanthropy. He is the author and co-author of numerous articles in the exempt organizations field.


Thomas D. Selz
Mr. Selz is a founding partner of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz focusing on entertainment law, copyright and trademark counseling, and motion picture, television, new media and publishing matters. In addition to transactional work from development through production and distribution, Mr. Selz focuses on mergers and acquisitions, tax-advantaged financing, secured transactions, private placements and public offerings, and other complex corporate work involving entertainment industry and intellectual property assets. Mr. Selz is the co-author of the Entertainment Law Treatise, 1st and 2nd Editions, Shepard's/ McGraw-Hill, 1983-2000, and of Entertainment Law, Casebook, 1st and 2nd Editions, Matthew-Bender, 1984, 1997. He has been Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Member, Copyright Committee, 1978-1981) and the American Bar Association (Member: Section on Patent, Trademark and Copyright Law; Entertainment and Sports Industries Forum Committee, 1979-Present). Mr. Selz was a director of the Independent Feature Project (1986 - 2001), and continues as General Counsel to the organization. Prior to founding the firm, Mr. Selz worked in the entertainment department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and was associated for three years, doing entertainment work, with Emil, Kobrin, Klein & Garbus. He is a graduate of Cornell University (BA, 1968) and Yale University (JD, 1971).


Teri D. Silvers
Ms. Silvers joined the Center in 2000 to work on the Clinical Seminar in Law and the Arts and assist in the development of new studies. She was formerly Director of Legal Services at Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in New York, and has taught copyright law to undergraduate art students and lectured on copyright basics to artists and others. She received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr and J.D. from Harvard.


Harold P. Weinberger
Mr. Weinberger heads Kramer Levin's Lanham Act false advertising group. He regularly advises clients on prospective advertising and has been lead counsel in the litigation of many false advertising cases under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, representing both plaintiffs and defendants, as well as other complex intellectual property matters at the trial and appellate levels and in arbitrations. Mr. Weinberger has also defended class actions alleging that consumers were defrauded by false advertising claims.

Mr. Weinberger's recent false advertising matters include his representation of McNeil-PPC, Inc., a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson and the manufacturer of Reach® dental floss, in which he obtained an injunction against Pfizer, Inc., the manufacturer of Listerine® mouthwash, precluding Pfizer from making false claims that Listerine is "as effective as floss," and requiring Pfizer to cover over labels on product bottles displaying the offending claim. Mr. Weinberger represents AstraZeneca in a pending false advertising dispute with TAP Pharmaceuticals in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, in which he defeated a preliminary injunction motion seeking to enjoin AstraZeneca's "Better is Better" comparative advertising campaign for Nexium,® the country's best-selling prescription drug. In another recent case, Mr. Weinberger obtained a judgment on behalf of Johnson & Johnson enjoining CIBA Vision Corporation from making false claims comparing its new O2OPTIX® contact lens product with ACUVUE® lenses and also awarding corrective advertising. In addition, following a jury trial, Mr. Weinberger recently obtained a verdict dismissing a complaint of Colgate-Palmolive, Inc. that advertising claims by The Procter & Gamble Company comparing its Crest Whitestrips® tooth bleaching product to Colgate's Simply White® product were false or misleading.

Mr. Weinberger's cases have generated a good deal of Lanham Act precedent, including three significant appellate court decisions: The Procter & Gamble Company v. Cheesebrough-Ponds, Inc., 747 F.2d 114 (2d Cir. 1984); Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corp. v. Richardson-Vicks, Inc., 902 F.2d 222 (3d Cir. 1990) and L&F Products v. The Procter & Gamble Company, 45 F.3d 709 (2d Cir. 1995). Another seminal decision arose from Mr. Weinberger's successful defense of advertising for the Aleve® analgesic, American Home Products Corp. v. The Procter & Gamble Company, et al. 871 F. Supp. 739 (D.N.J. 1994). In addition, Mr. Weinberger's successful prosecution of the first Lanham Act case dealing entirely with detailing of sales representatives for pharmaceutical products resulted in a significant decision, Zeneca Inc. v. Eli Lilly and Company, 1999 WL 509471 (S.D.N.Y. July 19, 1999).

Mr. Weinberger has spoken on issues relating to false advertising at cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry legal conferences and at ABA, PLI and other CLE seminars. He has authored numerous publications on the Lanham Act and related false advertising issues.


Richard N. Winfield
Mr. Winfield's deep involvement in extending freedom of the press is reflected in both his pro bono, volunteer work, his law school teaching, and his previous law practice.

Since the mid-1990's, Mr. Winfield has led the media law reform programs of the American Bar Association/Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative in numerous former Soviet bloc nations. More recently, the International Senior Lawyers Project, which he co-founded in 2000, has continued and expanded this work to Algeria, China, Japan and Turkey.

For over three decades he served as general counsel of the Associated Press while a partner in the law firm of Rogers & Wells, which became Clifford Chance US LLP. There he worked closely with American publishers and editors, and defended AP and other media clients in many hundreds of press freedom cases.

Mr. Winfield is chair of The Fund for Peace, a Washington-based non-governmental organization. He serves of counsel in the international law firm of Clifford Chance, where he engaged in a communications and commercial litigation practice, with emphasis on First Amendment litigation. Mr. Winfield served as Assistant Counsel to the Governor of New York, Special Counsel to the New York State Public Employment Relations Board and Co-Counsel to the Governor's Committee on Public Employee Relations. He served as a U.S. naval officer for four years, and taught European history and U.S. diplomatic history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Mr. Winfield is a graduate of Villanova University and Georgetown University Law Center.