Covington & Burling LLP operates as a limited liability partnership worldwide, with the practice in England and Wales conducted by an affiliated
limited liability multinational partnership, Covington & Burling LLP, which is formed under the laws of the State of Delaware in the United States
and authorized and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with registration number 77071..
Covington has a long history of representing companies in content creation, licensing, and distribution matters. We represent a wide range of entertainment and media industry clients, including film studios, television networks and stations, digital video channels, video game publishers, social media companies, sports leagues, streaming platforms, and celebrities. Because we work with so many industry leaders in projects across the world, we have a broad and deep understanding of the digital and traditional media industries across our U.S. and international offices.
Our work includes the representation of prominent and independent media companies, such as The Walt Disney Company, AMC Networks, ViacomCBS, Univision Communications, NFL Network, TV One, and Ovation, in content licensing and distribution matters. We also represent several major streaming services in acquiring, producing, and distributing original and licensed content for their proprietary platforms. On behalf of both our content and platform clients, we also handle bundling arrangements, app placement and revenue sharing partnerships, development of proprietary “direct to consumer” (DTC) distribution platforms, and digital marketing, ad tech, and other arrangements for data monetization.
Beyond negotiation and drafting, we counsel on deal strategy, review, interpret and evaluate compliance with most favored nations provisions and other contractual provisions, conduct due diligence and contractual analysis in connection with media-related corporate transactions, and work closely with our litigators in content licensing and distribution related disputes. Our matters also span a wide range of technologies, including traditional pay television systems, mobile and internet “over the top” (OTT) streaming, and emerging technologies (e.g., AR and VR). And, our work involves an extensive combination of business models, including pay and free ad-supported linear (FAST), subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), free ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD), transactional rental and “sell-through”, pay-per-view, premium a la carte, and subscription bundles.
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