Logan Sandler, who graduated in May 2022, had his law review article chosen by Thomson Reuters (West) as one of the best law review articles related to entertainment law, publishing, and the arts published within the last year. Thomson Reuters will include Sandler's article in the 2022 edition of the Entertainment, Publishing, and the Arts Handbook, which delivers the latest expert analysis and commentary on legal and business issues associated with the entertainment, publishing, and arts industries. Miami Law has expertise in the converging areas of entertainment law and art law as well as intellectual property law.
"I am very proud of this accomplishment and for our law review's efforts in helping me bring the article into its best possible form," said Sandler. Sandler's article, “What Is Standard Tomorrow, May Not Have Been Today: An Argument for Claiming Scènes à Faire,” was initially published in the first issue of the University of Miami Law Review's 76th Volume in November 2021.
The article largely centered on a lawsuit concerning the "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise, which required the Ninth Circuit to grapple with applying a key copyright law principle: the scènes à faire doctrine. The doctrine limits the scope of what authors can claim as substantially similar by excluding the stock elements in an expressive work from copyright protection.
“What Is Standard Tomorrow, May Not Have Been Today” argues that courts should focus a scènes à faire analysis from the perspective of the writer at the time that the copyrighted material was written. As Sandler put it, "The article, in part, grew out of recognizing that the Ninth Circuit's opinion exposed the doctrine's key drawback – the lack of a temporal framework."
To remedy the doctrine's inadequacies, Sandler's article, which focuses primarily within the context of screenplays and teleplays, ultimately proposes an author-drafted copyright registration supplement that describes the intricacies of how a genre's conventions were implemented in a work at the time of creation through utilizing plot, character, theme, and setting.
Sandler, who was the 11th Circuit editor for the University of Miami Law Review's 76th Volume, brings a uniquely personal and nuanced perspective to his article. A graduate of the American Film Institute Conservatory, Sandler has a distinguished record as an award-winning screenwriter and film director. His work has premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and other leading film festivals.
"My legal education at the University of Miami not only inspired me to engage in meaningful legal work but it also provided me with an opportunity to fashion ideas for the purpose of influencing policy in diverse areas that I am passionate about," Sandler said.
After sitting for the Florida bar exam, the Miami-native will continue his legal career at Kapp Morrison LLP, a Florida-based boutique law firm that focuses on corporate transactions and commercial real estate.
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