Everything from movie production, song recording/release, and TV programs to gambling and the online casino industry is regulated by laws. When you play your favorite Ultra Hot Slot Machine or watch the recent trendy movie in your leisure time, you probably don’t even think about the regulations applying to them. And it’s normal not to go deep down into the details when you just want to enjoy your free time without extra complications. However, the situation is different if you are related to the entertainment industry yourself. In this case, knowing all the ins and outs of all entertainment laws is more than important to protect your rights in a legal way whenever needed.

Here let’s talk about what entertainment laws are, how they work, and what is so special about them.

General Introduction to Entertainment Law: Definition and Specifics

In a few words, entertainment law includes anything regarding the application of employment, intellectual property, and contract law principles to the interactions that happen between members of the entertainment industry.

Attorneys and other legal experts who work in this particular area of the law are normally engaged in one of two following activities:

• People hire them to structure deals that are beneficial to them.
• They get hired to protect the interests of their clients if the deals go bad.

Individuals from the entertainment industry who claim proprietary rights to television programs, motion pictures, music, and any other forms of entertainment can also seek the assistance of an attorney to protect their rights from possible infringement.

Another example where you can clearly see the significance and need for entertainment laws and regulations is the increasingly evolving gambling industry. Today, a vast number of gaming providers and online casinos make their way to the industry. As such, the need to filter all the platforms and make the players’ experience safe and reliable leads many countries to adopt specialized laws to regulate the industry. It means you can load and spin the reels of top PlayFortune free 3 reel slots without worrying about your security.

What’s the Role of Entertainment Law?

Legal problems can arise at any phase in the creation of original pieces of work of entertainment. When it reaches the production stage, formal agreements and contracts are required to point out the respective rights of all parties involved in the project. For instance, an actor playing in a commercial, in most cases, will be asked to sign a specific talent release.

This agreement is a legally enforceable document where the actor provides the producer the right to use his name, voice, performance, and likeness in exchange for financial compensation. All terms and points of these and other agreements should be negotiated by the involved parties and checked to ensure they comply with the law.

During the next stages, which include distribution and licensing, any kind of legal issues can pop out in the dealings between the owners of an entertainment work and those who will be distributing it to the public. For instance, the person holding the copyright to a trendy song can enter into a licensing agreement with one of the radio stations. The copyright owner gets a royalty payment whenever the radio plays the song. Such agreements and contracts are essential when protected entertainment works are disseminated through other channels and sources, such as the internet.

In a nutshell, entertainment law has all these kinds of transactions under control and offers protection against unauthorized use.

Contract Disputes: How to Efficiently Solve The Arising Problems?

Disputes, conflicts of interest, and contention can arise at any point in time over the terms and conditions of an entertainment law contract. Informal discussions between the involved parties to a dispute have all the chances to produce a solution that satisfies both parties and saves them a great deal of expense and trouble. However, it’s not a must to directly head over to court to seek a satisfying resolution. The court should be the very last option you can turn to when all other informal negotiations fail to be effective.

Hiring an established attorney who has proven experience in dealing with entertainment issues and disputes and is familiar with the leading players in the industry can be the most suitable and simple way to achieve a compromise. Other appropriate options include mediation, arbitration, and other types of ADR (alternative dispute resolution).

But What If Negotiation Fails?

There is always the slight possibility that negotiations over an entertainment law dispute meet a dead end, and compromise is no longer possible through informal and “friendly” ways. It’s where the need to prosecute an entertainment law case comes to the first plan.

When the actions of the opposite party have caused significant or irreversible harm, filing a lawsuit can be the only suitable option to obtain compensation.

After listening to both parties and carefully evaluating the caused damages, juries will make a verdict and determine who is to blame. When the lawsuit ends, they will award damages to the wronged party. However, in most cases, the chances of winning at trial depend to a large degree upon the professionalism and skill of the lawyer leading the case.

Presenting a law case to court members requires a particular kind of advocate. In order to proceed successfully, an attorney should have a courtroom manner, a strong understanding of the legal rules, and a solid knowledge of the current entertainment industry.

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What Is a Registered Agent?

An NJ registered agent is an official representative of a legal entity that agrees to receive legal mail on behalf of the company in New Jersey. Legal mail or formal correspondence embraces written communications between a legal person and statutory authorities including:

• Federal, state, and local government bodies;
• Tax departments and agencies;
• Licensing bodies;
• Courts and any judicial services;
• Controlling regulators, etc.

Speaking of legal mail, to be clear, it covers

• Government statements;
• Statutory notifications;
• Tax notes;
• Filing and reporting requests;
• Service of process (lawsuits, summons, claims, court decisions, etc.).

New Jersey RA Requirements

Though an RA is required by law, the state regulations are not too strict or limiting. In fact, those rules are very simple and straightforward. According to Section 42-2C-14 of the New Jersey LLC Act, a registered agent should:

• Be an adult person over 18 years of age or a legal entity entitled to conduct business in the state;
• Have a physical street address in New Jersey (registered address) where service of process and other official documents can be delivered;
• Be consistently present under that registered address to receive the mail in person. 

New Jersey RA Role and Functions

Technically, the functions of the New Jersey RA are to:

• Maintain a permanent actual street address in the state. P.O. box can be used only in addition to a real address;
• Be available during common business hours (9 am to 5 pm) on workdays;
• Physically receive the company’s legal mail;
• Promptly notify the business owner of any urgent or vital correspondence and forward the letters if necessary. 

While those duties seem like nothing special, a New Jersey RA role is quite important. Most often than not, statutory documents stipulate certain conditions to follow, deadlines to observe, and actions to take.

Should a business owner fail to meet any of the statutory requirements, it will cause penalties and fines to the least. Meanwhile, more serious consequences include administrative company dissolution. 

With that, by serving as a point of contact between a legal entity and the state government and tracing the letters and notes that call for an immediate reaction from the company owners, an RA stands on guard for business compliance and good standing with the state.  

Appointing an RA in New Jersey

A registered agent is officially designated and empowered as such at the time of submitting the company’s formation documents to the state. Once the LLC’s statute or the corporation’s Articles of Association are approved by the Secretary of State, an RA is legalized. 

An RA in New Jersey can be appointed in two ways:

• When filing online via the State of New Jersey’s website; or 
• When filing in paper and mailing the documents to the Division of Revenue. 

Whatever the registration method, RA data should be entered in the formation documents. While filing incurs a state fee, RA registration is free of charge.

Bottom Line

To become a registered agent in New Jersey, you just need to be an adult resident of the state. No specific training or professional background is required. 

To serve as an RA for your own company or other formal entities in the state, simply give your consent to perform that role in the process of the company’s state registration.

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The formation of the U.S. legal system began as early as the colonial period. All 13 colonies, despite differences in social and political structure, had common legal roots. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was an active absorption of English “common law,” “equity law” and statutory law, which had direct effect in the colonies. But this absorption was not of a mechanical nature; it simplified and adapted the rules to the needs of colonial society.

After independence the influence of English law began to wane somewhat. In a number of states (e.g., New York and Maryland) the application of English law, originating after 1776, was prohibited. In some states even the citation of new decisions of the courts of the former metropolis was forbidden. In the early nineteenth century, however, the authority of English “common law” increased. In 1804 the states of New York and Massachusetts began to officially publish court decisions, and this practice was followed by other states. By 1880 about 4,000 volumes of federal and state court decisions had been published. The system of “common law” was also adopted by the newly formed states. However, American “common law” was not an exact copy of the English system. In the U.S. there was a much earlier fusion of “common law” and “the law of equity. The principle of judicial precedent obliged courts to follow the decisions of higher courts, but the courts did not consider themselves bound by their own decisions. The supreme authority in matters of law was the U.S. Supreme Court, whose interpretations became binding on all courts.

In addition to the common law system, a written, or statutory, law developed in the U.S., with constitutions and federal and state legislation based on them as its main source. Beginning in 1828, first New York State and then others began to publish official collections of legislation.

The question of whether or not there was a federal “common law” in the United States became a serious legal problem. The 1789 Act provided that federal courts could apply, in matters not governed by federal law, the laws of the state where the federal court heard the case. However, it remained unclear whether the jurisprudence of that state could be used. There were differing views and conflicting jurisprudence. In 1842, in Swift v. Tison, the court for the first time applied the “common law of the land” doctrine. However, the application of this principle began to lead to an unjustifiable duality of decisions. Ultimately, the notion of “federal common law” was held to be contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, since it enshrined the primacy of the federal government in those matters which the Constitution referred to state authority.

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The structure of modern U.S. law is generally similar to that of common law.

What distinguishes American law from English common law is:
A great degree of systematization and structure;
The enormous role of the Constitution in shaping the rules of law;
A two-tiered legal and governmental system;
A polyphonic legal culture.

The United States was formed and developed on the basis of decentralized forms of structure and communication, leading later to federalism as a special system of state decentralization and self-government.

Throughout the common law system, U.S. law has a number of peculiar features:
A legal development in two levels in which state and federal legal systems operate simultaneously and in interaction with each other;
The position of the federal Constitution, the role of which is predetermined by the interpretation of its provisions by the Supreme Court;
The implementation of the principle of separation of powers, with the simultaneous introduction of judicial review of the constitutionality of laws;
Preservation of the supremacy of judicial practice, combined with the rapid and extensive development of sectoral legislation, whose codification takes place in the form of a consolidation of norms and acts.
Collections of laws are a variety of systematized acts in force and the Code of Laws ;
Differences in legal terminology.

The constituent states of the United States have broad competencies within which they create their own system of case law and their own legislation. Thus, there are 51 systems of law in the United States: federal and in the 50 states. In each state, the courts exercise jurisdiction independently. Quite often, different state courts have issued different or even directly opposite decisions in similar cases, which creates certain conflicts when state court decisions diverge from federal court decisions.

A great deal of variance and difference in the legal system is introduced by each state’s law. Each state has different grounds for divorce, some states have separate property laws, some have community of property laws, and so on. All of this makes the country’s legal system more confusing and complex.

Effect of the rules of precedent in today’s environment
More than 300 volumes of case law are published annually in the United States, but precedent continues to be sought. Historically, the Superior Courts and the Supreme Court have not been bound by their own precedents. From this follows great maneuverability and freedom in the process of adapting law to the ever-changing conditions of public life.

In light of the power of the American courts, the free handling of precedent has the special significance of being able to control the constitutionality of laws. The U.S. Supreme Court and the State Supreme Court and can dispense with precedent for constitutional interpretation. The Supreme Court’s active use of constitutional review points to the special role of the judiciary in the U.S. system of government.

Judicial influence on legislation is highly capable. Legislation has a significant weight in the legal system, which is associated with the existence of a system of written constitutions – the federal Constitution and state constitutions. States actively exercise broad legislative competence, from which follows a significant body of statutory law at the state level.

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The drafting of these codes and laws is carried out by a nationwide commission, created from representatives of all the states together with the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute. A draft becomes law only after it has been passed into law in the individual states. The first and most famous was the Uniform Commercial Code (“the bankers’ code”), approved in 1962. The code regulated regulations on negotiable instruments, the sale of goods and the security of transactions. The content of the code and the direction of unification of private law determined the interests of business and the country’s business elite. Especially great is the importance of customary law in the field of functioning of state power.

The current U.S. Constitution does not currently cover many significant aspects of governmental organization, which is compensated by the existing legislation and the recognition of existing, established customs and well-established traditions. In the realm of private law, custom plays a much smaller role, acting as “trade customs. These customs are represented as an established order of business relations, special practices that have a normative impact on the development of social relations and on the resolution of disputes arising in this regard.

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