Bob
Kohn
TECH ATTORNEY - START-UP ENTREPRENEUR - INVESTOR
WHO I AM
Bob Kohn founded EMusic.com, the pioneering music download service, and RoyaltyShare, which develops web-based systems to faciliate the accurate accounting of digital revenue and royalties to authors, recording artists, songwriters, music publishers and other creators and rights owners.
Kohn is the author of an 1,800 page legal treatise on music law, Kohn On Music Licensing (4th Ed. 2010), which USA Today called, "the bible of legal issues in the music world." He has served as Chief Legal Officer of Pretty Good Privacy, makers of PGP encyrption software, and Borland Software, makers of Turbo Pascal, Sidekick, Paradox, Quattro Pro, and Borland C++. Prior to that worked for the Law Offices of Milton A. "Mickey" Rudin, attorney for Frank Sinatra, Cher, Liza Minnelli, Warner Bros. Music, 20th Century Fox, and others.
From time to time, he serves as an expert witness in music copyright cases. Clients have included ASCAP, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group. Kohn is the co-inventor on a patent covering a web-based royalty system and user interface.
Kohn is currently working on another book and will be entering the Masters in Law (LLM) program in the Fall, 2015 at Columbia Law School. He is also a Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas, a non-profit foundation dedicated to the promulgation of the lifelong work of the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler.
Kohn lives in Manhattan and also blogs at www.Theoria.com.
SPEAKING CALENDAR
10/9/14 ACPA 2014 Annual Meeting
Washington, DC
Recent Events
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7/1/14 CNN: Quest Means Business (video)
New York, NY
6/30/14 CNBC: Squawk Box (video)
New York, NY
6/23/14 Copyright Office Roundtable on Music Licensing
U.S. Copyright Office / New York University Law School
New York, NY
PAST & PRESENT
Founder & former Chairman of EMusic.com (formerly, NASDAQ:EMUS), the pioneering MP3 music download company. Started in 1997, five years before iTunes, Emusic remains the leading source of quality MP3 downloads from major and independent record companies.
Founder and former Chairman & CEO of RoyaltyShare, Inc., a leading developer of SaaS software to track digital revenue and accurate account royalties for record labels, music publishers, and book publishers.
Former Vice Chairman and General Counsel of Borland Software Corp. (formerly, NASDAQ:BORL), developer of Turbo Pacal, Sidekick, Quattro Pro, Paradox, dBase, and Borland C++.
Former Exec. VP & General Counsel of Pretty Good Privacy Software, Inc., developers of "PGP," the world's most trusted email and file encyrption software.
Currently blogging on copyright law here and the law and philosophy of artificial intelligence at Theoria.com
Co-author of Kohn On Music Licensing (Wolters Kluwer 2010) an 1,800 page treatise on music law, which USA Today called, "the bible on legal issues in the music world."
RECENT PROJECTS
Comic-novel amicus curiae brief in the e-book anti-trust litigation, U.S. v. Apple (9/6/2012).
And here's the amicus brief I filed with the 2nd Cir. Court of Appeals (3/7/2014).
Response to request for comments by U.S. Copyright Office regarding the state of Music Licensing (5/23/2014).
Amicus curiae brief opposing a writ of habeas corpus filed on behalf of a chimpanzee named Tommy (5/14/2014).
Amicus curiae brief opposing a writ of habeas corpus filed on behalf of a chimpanzee named Kiko (6/23/2014).
The background for these filings are discussed on my Theoria.com blog here, here, here and here.
NY Times op-ed piece on "How Book Publishers Can Beat Amazon" by Bob Kohn (5/31/2014).