Partner Frank Scibilia co-chairs Pryor Cashman’s Copyright and Music practices. For nearly 30 years, Frank has handled and litigated complex copyright and related issues -- especially those concerning the exploitation of music on emerging digital platforms -- for clients including major and independent music publishers and record labels, music industry trade organizations, licensing collectives, content aggregators, and individual songwriters and recording artists.

Frank’s deep knowledge of copyright law as it applies to the music industry -- including the intricacies of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Music Modernization Act, and the statutory licenses in Sections 114 and 115 and termination provisions in Sections 203 and 304 of the U.S. Copyright Act -- helps his clients anticipate legal issues and trends, navigate obstacles, and achieve success in litigation and business transactions. Frank is engaged at the forefront of the firm’s practices in litigation, transactions and regulatory work precisely because his clients often have common interests across all three.

As a litigator, Frank has been involved in many of the seminal cases that established the boundaries of liability in connection with the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content via the Internet, including cases against Napster, MP3.com, Limewire, MP3tunes and Grooveshark. He was lead counsel for EMI Music Publishing in MP3tunes, the case that yielded the second-largest intellectual property jury verdict (over $48 million) during the last 20 years. He also played lead roles in both the Phonorecords III and Phonorecords IV Copyright Royalty Board regulatory proceedings to determine rates and terms for the Section 115 compulsory license for interactive streaming, and has counseled The MLC, the licensing
collective that administers the statutory blanket license, since its inception. With respect to AI matters, Frank has, inter alia, submitted amicus briefs on behalf of the RIAA, NMPA and other trade organizations supporting the Plaintiffs in Concord Music Group v. Anthropic PBC.

Frank’s work extends beyond litigation to music transactional work and copyright counseling. Prospective buyers and sellers of catalogs of music assets turn to Frank for his skillful and thorough copyright due diligence of these assets, which provides invaluable assistance in determining the overall value of the music assets. Frank has also negotiated and/or drafted licenses for the exploitation of musical works and sound recordings on a myriad of digital platforms, including audio and video streaming services, cloud locker services, lyric services, crowd-sourced music services, and sheet music, guitar tab, and fitness apps and services. Frank negotiated the original “New Digital Media Agreements” that became recognized as the template agreements by which record labels obtained rights from music publishers to bundle in licenses with services for certain types of digital music products.

Frank has repeatedly been named one of a handful of leading copyright lawyers in the country by The Legal 500, and a top attorney in copyright by Best Lawyers in America. He has repeatedly been named a “Top Music Lawyer” by Billboard Magazine, and a music “Trailblazer” by the New York Law Journal. He has been recognized in Variety’s Legal Impact Report and named to the Super Lawyers list for intellectual property litigation over 15 years running. Frank is also a co-author of the New York State Bar Association’s nationally distributed treatise, Entertainment Law, and has served as a Trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA.