18th Annual Sports Law Symposium Biographies

Keynote Speaker

Joseph Collins, Esq.
Counsel of the New York Yankees

Joe is getting ready to begin his fourth season as Counsel of the New York Yankees after joining the Front Office in May 2011.

Joe has been an instrumental part of the team that brings a diverse array of sports and entertainment to Yankee Stadium—making it a year-round destination for hockey, college football, soccer, concerts and other corporate and private events. He negotiated with the NHL to recently host the first ever hockey games at the Stadium and helped renew the tradition of college football with games featuring Notre Dame, Army, Syracuse and Rutgers. Joe was crucial in bringing soccer, a staple at the original Yankee Stadium, back to the Bronx with matches showcasing the international talent of Manchester City, Chelsea, AC Milan and Real Madrid. He has also worked with LiveNation to welcome Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Madonna, and Jay Z and Justin Timberlake to the Stadium stage.

Before joining the Yankees, Joe was an associate in the Bank Finance group of White & Case LLP in New York. Prior to that, Joe was an associate with Shearman & Sterling LLP in both the New York and London offices. In 2000, Joe received a B.A. from The American University in Political Science and Interdisciplinary Studies. In 2007, he received his J.D., with honors, from Rutgers University School of Law—Newark, where he served as Senior Managing Editor of the Rutgers Law Review. Joe’s initial employment with the Yankees was as a summer intern in the original Yankee Stadium. He resides in Brooklyn with his wife, Whitney, and their daughter, Avery.

 

Moderators and Panelists

Daniel Adams
Counsel, Ropes & Gray LLP

Dan joined Ropes & Gray in 2004 and is counsel in the sports law group.

Dan’s practice focuses primarily on transactional matters, representing private equity firms and strategic investors in the structuring and negotiation of leveraged buyouts, cross-border transactions, mergers and acquisitions and other investments. He also advises on corporate governance and other general corporate matters. As a member of the sports law group, Dan negotiates the employment, sponsorship, media and speaking arrangements for various collegiate and professional coaches, administrators and broadcasters. In addition, Dan Negotiates sponsorship, licensing, joint venture, broadcast and media rights and sports venue leasing transactions.

Dan has acquisition experience in a broad range of industries, including amateur, collegiate and professional athletics, technology, media, retail, health care, consumer products and financial services. Dan has recently negotiated the acquisition of a minority interest in a major league baseball team.

 

Stephen Baird
Shareholder, Winthrop & Weinstine, P.A.

Stephen Baird joined Winthrop & Weinstine, P.A., as a shareholder in 2003 with over a decade of significant experience in the intellectual property arena. He heads the Intellectual Property and Trademark and Brand Management practice groups, and his practice emphasizes trademark law, related unfair competition law and copyright law. Stephen counsels clients on trademark usage and clearance, branding strategies, domestic and worldwide portfolio management, litigation and enforcement, Internet domain name disputes, licensing and prosecution. He also handles trademark litigation matters in federal district court and in proceedings before the United States Patent & Trademark Office. In addition, Stephen manages both large and small U.S. and international trademark portfolios for a wide variety of companies. Prior to his experience in law firms, Stephen was the judicial law clerk to Judge Wilson Cowen, Senior Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Mr. Baird was at the frontlines of the trademark battle over the Washington Redskins trademark in the 1990s. After studying the issue as a student at the University of Iowa College of Law, Baird met with American Indian leaders about the issue. In September 1992, he filed a petition to cancel the Redskins trademarks on behalf of a coalition led by Suzan Harjo. Mr. Baird oversaw the case, Harjo et al. v. Pro Football Inc., until he left Dorsey to take a job with a Houston-based intellectual-property firm in 1998. The next year, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled that the Redskins trademarks were disparaging and agreed to remove the protections.

 

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics; Director Division of Medical Ethics, NYU Langone Medical Center

Dr. Caplan is the author or editor of thirty-two books and over 600 papers in peer reviewed journals. He has served on a number of national and international committees including as the Chair, National Cancer Institute Biobanking Ethics Working Group; the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning; the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Department of Health and Human Services on Blood Safety and Availability; a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses; the special advisory committee to the International Olympic Committee on genetics and gene therapy; the ethics committee of the American Society of Gene Therapy; the special advisory panel to the National Institutes of Mental Health on human experimentation on vulnerable subjects. He recently served as the Co-Director of the Joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on Trafficking in Organs and Body Parts. He is currently the ethics advisor to DOD/DARPA on synthetic biology.

Dr, Caplan writes a regular column on bioethics for NBC.com. He is a monthly commentator on bioethics and health care issues for WebMD/Medscape. He appears frequently as a guest and commentator on various other national and international media outlets.

Dr. Caplan holds seven honorary degrees from colleges and medical schools. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, the NY Academy of Medicine, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the American College of Legal Medicine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Caplan has served on the special advisory committee to the International Olympic Committee on genetics and gene therapy and the FIFA special advisory committee on the use of technology in allowing athletes to adapt to altitude and other environmental challenges. He has published widely on the role of ethics in sports.

 

Christopher R. Chase
Counsel, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz

Christopher R. Chase is Counsel to Frankfurt Kurnit where he practices intellectual property, advertising, sports, and entertainment law.  He has been recognized by Legal 500 and Super Lawyers in the area of marketing and advertising law.

Mr. Chase counsels entities and individuals in the advertising and entertainment industries on all aspects of their businesses, including rights clearance (such as copyright, trademark, and rights of publicity), regulatory matters, and risk assessment. He structures and negotiates creative services agreements, commercial production agreements, brand and celebrity licensing agreements, sponsorship and event promotion agreements, celebrity talent and on-camera agreements, content distribution agreements, media agreements, content releases and licenses, and music licenses.

Additionally, he works with numerous clients in the sports industry, including counseling a major sports league on branded entertainment, intellectual property, and promotional matters, advising both sponsors and properties on the structure and negotiation of sponsorship and endorsement arrangements, counseling agency clients that activate sponsors’ marketing campaigns, advising major sports apparel and footwear companies on marketing campaigns, and counseling a major University on its media rights agreement in the wake of the athletic conference realignment. Mr. Chase has been quoted in Sports Business Journal on various legal issues and is a founder of the firm’s sports law group.  Mr. Chase’s practice also includes counseling entertainment, advertising, sports, media, and fashion industry clients on the clearance, selection, maintenance, and enforcement of trademarks worldwide, as well as prosecuting trademark applications before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and participating in actions before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

Mr. Chase graduated from The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law (JD, 2002, magna cum laude) and the University of North Carolina (BA, 1999). During law school, he was the Executive Articles Editor of the Catholic University Law Review and interned for the Honorable S. Martin Teel, Jr. of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia.  Mr. Chase is a member of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of the New York State Bar Association, the Sports Lawyers Association, the International Trademark Association, the National Sports Marketing Network, and the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.  Prior to joining Frankfurt Kurnit, Mr. Chase was a litigation associate at Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells LLP.  He is an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law and the Parsons, New School of Design.

 

Marc Edelman
Associate Professor of Law, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York

Marc Edelman is an Associate Professor of Law at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York. He specializes in sports law, antitrust, intellectual property, and gaming law.

Professor Edelman is cited by the media on a wide range of sports law topics, including how the Sherman Act applies to professional sports leagues, how gaming laws apply to fantasy sports contests, and the legal issues pertaining to NCAA amateurism. His publications on sports law have been cited by three Supreme Court briefs, numerous textbooks, and more than 100 law review articles.

A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a cum laude graduate of Michigan Law School, Professor Edelman began his professional career by practicing antitrust and sports law with the law firms Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP and Dewey Ballantine LLP. He has also taught on the full-time faculty at the Barry University School of Law and at Rutgers School of Law-Camden.

During the summers, Professor Edelman teaches a course on Professional Sports and the Law at Fordham University School of Law. He also writes a column on sports law for Forbes SportsMoney, and provides legal consulting to clients in the areas of intellectual property, sports law and gaming law.

 

Louis Ederer
Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP

Louis Ederer is a partner in the firm’s intellectual property group. Mr. Ederer’s practice focuses on intellectual property law, covering the areas of trademark, patent, and copyright litigation, prosecution, and counseling. He regularly advises on intellectual property issues as they relate to corporate and commercial transactions, and on licensing, distribution, fair trade, and competition issues. He has represented clients before state and government agencies, including numerous state liquor authorities, the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Federal Trade Commission, and US Customs and Border Protection.

Mr. Ederer also has extensive experience in sports and entertainment law, having negotiated agreements with entertainers and professional athletes, venue leases, sponsorship agreements, management/operation agreements, and franchise agreements.

Mr. Ederer’s litigation accomplishments have been recognized by The National Law Journal, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Law Journal, and Business Week. He has lectured on intellectual property issues before numerous bar and industry associations, and is often quoted in the media on intellectual property issues, including developments in anticounterfeiting law.

 

Mark Lepselter
President, MAXX Sports & Entertainment

Mark Lepselter, founder of MAXX Sports & Entertainment (originally Maxximum Marketing), has overseen the boutique agency’s growth since it was initially formed in 1995.  Today, MAXX is a powerful broadcasting, branding, endorsement, entertainment, and literary firm, representing top talent from the baseball, basketball, football, and hockey worlds, as well as talented personalities from other backgrounds. Through it all, Mark has been the relentless force that has guided the firm toward its current position at the center of the sports broadcasting universe.

Mark has continually been able to present his clients with many of the most highly coveted opportunities in the industry.  Those engagements have included The Today Show, The Olympics, The World Cup, The Super Bowl, The Golden Globes, “Football Night In America,” The Stanley Cup Finals, and many more.

 

Jessie Mishkin
Associate, Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP

Jessie Mishkin is an associate in the Litigation Department of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP’s New York office. Her practice focuses on various forms of complex commercial litigation. Ms. Mishkin has represented clients in the energy, insurance, banking, media, and manufacturing industries in both state and federal courts and in arbitration. Ms. Mishkin has counseled clients and litigated matters involving class actions, contracts, fiduciary duties, securities, intellectual property, appeals, and bankruptcy. Ms. Mishkin received her B.A. from Rutgers University, summa cum laude. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

 

Matthew Pace
Partner, Arent Fox LLP

Matthew Pace, a partner in the New York office of Arent Fox LLP, has more than 20 years of professional experience working for and representing some of the biggest names in the sports industry. Matthew brings hands-on industry experience to the table and focuses on a broad range of sports business matters, including team acquisitions and sales, sponsorships, licensing and promotional agreements, joint venture activities, digital rights, and other sports media issues.

 

Alex Radetsky
President, Radegen Sports Management

Alex Radetsky has almost 25 years of experience in the field of sports management. He worked with SFX Sports Group and SFX Baseball before opening his own firm. He represents players including Yasiel Puig, David Ortiz, and Jose Bautistia, among others.

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