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BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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RICK KURNIT
Partner
Rick Kurnit has thirty years experience in the advertising and marketing services and publishing industries, representing advertisers, advertising agencies, public relations, promotion, and publishing companies. He has handled the leading cases defining the application of intellectual property law to advertising and marketing communications, including representing the defendants in the Vanna White, Woody Allen and Jackie Onassis look-alike cases; Viking Press, Nelson DeMille, Terry McMillan, and other authors and publishers in libel cases based on works of fiction; Prodigy in the Stratton Oakmont case and other cases defining online liability; John Deere in defining use of trademarks in comparative advertising; the maker of a smaller copy of the necklace from Titanic in defining the scope of parallel marketing; and "Gone With The Wind" in defining parody and copyright infringement. Rick has also handled numerous Lanham Act and comparative advertising cases.
In addition to all aspects of advertising and marketing communications, Rick advises marketing companies and individuals on mergers, acquisitions, succession plans, employment agreements, partnership agreements, stock option and phantom equity plans. Rick also serves as special advertising counsel for many leading advertisers.
Rick teaches advertising and intellectual property law and lectures regularly for the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Promotion Marketing Association, the Association of National Advertisers, and the American Law Institute/American Bar Association course on marketing and distribution of products. He has been a featured speaker at Beijing University; Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Fordham, and Cardozo Law Schools; and conferences in Asia, Europe, and North America. Recently, Rick moderated Content & Commerce: Hollywood Meets Madison Ave., a branded entertainment panel discussion at Advertising Week NYC. He is a member of the Entertainment, Media & Technology Dean's Advisory Board at NYU's Stern School of Business.
Rick has published numerous articles on these subjects, including: the Advertising Law chapter in Corporate Legal Departments (2004); "Restricting Speech on the Internet," a panel discussion, 8 Fordham Intel. Prop. Media L. J. 395 (1998); "Liability Online," 1 Journal of Internet Law 15 (1998); "Pornography on the Internet," a panel discussion, 14 Cardozo Arts and Ent. L. J. 343 (1996); "Right of Publicity in the Year 2020," a symposium, 20 Columbia-VLA Journal of Law and Arts 1 (1995); "Libel Claims Based on Fiction," Brooklyn L. Rev. (1985); and "The Forgotten Half of the Fairness Doctrine," 10 Harv. Civ. Rts. - Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 130 (1975).
Before joining Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, Rick served as law clerk to Thomas P. Griesa, of the Federal District Court in New York City, and was associated for five years with the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He is a graduate of Columbia University (AB, magna cum laude, 1972) Phi Beta Kappa, and Harvard University (JD, cum laude, 1975).
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