Media & entertainment

“Manches delivers the highest-quality work on a consistent basis.” The Legal 500

Experience

• Extensive work on behalf of the Tolkien Estate in connection with its case against New Line Cinema Corporation in Los Angeles Superior Court for unpaid royalties of an estimated $150m due in respect of the three ‘Lord of the Rings’ motion pictures released in 2001-2003.  Believed to be the largest gross profit participation case ever brought on behalf of an author, it was satisfactorily settled by Manches in 2009 to widespread public acclaim, since the settlement makes possible the filming of Tolkien’s well-known children’s classic, “The Hobbit”.
   
• Advising author J D Salinger on the UK copyright implications of the publication of an unauthorised sequel to his famous “Catcher in the Rye”,entitled “60 Years Later – Coming Through The Rye” by one J D California.
   
• Advising Marvel Entertainment, Inc on their acquisition of the Marvelman characters and comic strips, originally published in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s; the deal was finally completed and announced at Comic Con International in San Diego in July 2009.
   
• Advising The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (part of the Natural Environment Research Council) on agreements for the use of their spatial datasets, a project which included negotiation with Ordnance Survey in connection with the use of their mapping data and with public-sector funders of other spatial datasets.
   
• Acting for Marshall Cavendish (part of the Times Publishing Group of Singapore) on the sale of its English Language Teaching (ELT) business, including the Just Right series, to Cengage Learning, Inc. 
   
• Acting for John Wiley & Sons, Inc, the New York Stock Exchange-listed publisher, on its £200m capital repatriation scheme.