Drive two miles southwest of Chicago’s beautiful Millennium Park and you’ll find yourself where it all started: a small fabric store on Roosevelt Road, where Dima’s passion for fashion design began to take shape. It was here where Dima discovered her love for designing clothing and embarked on her journey as a protector of creativity. 

Dima’s love for fashion and finding interesting and unique fabrics was developed through her early college years. She designed women’s clothing and later found her niche in making men’s ties and redesigning vintage apparel. At about the same time, she met and teamed up with her now-husband - a music producer that owns and operates his own independent record label - and began helping him build up his business, including strategizing on releases and designing merchandise for his brand, It was through this first-hand experience that Dima discovered the importance of protecting the creative journey. With the investment in fabric, tools, and equipment, not to mention time and creative energy, it can be very expensive and consuming to turn creative imagination into something tangible. It’s a risky journey with no guarantee of a successful outcome. This is in part why Dima went to law school; she wanted to help protect creative ideas and empower artists to turn their passions into a successful and sustainable career.

Dima’s practice is centered on helping clients attain adequate protection of their intellectual property and maximize the exploitation of their creations. In the end, Dima has stitched together a seamless understanding of how important it is to protect the creatives.

Legal Expertise

Dima is an Associate in the Los Angeles office. She focuses her practice on transactional entertainment law, representing primarily musical artists, music producers, entertainment-focused trade associations, and songwriters, in addition to audio-visual production companies, networks, studios, writers, directors, and other talent and content creators. Dima has experience drafting, negotiating, and reviewing contracts dealing with various stages of content creation such as funding, development, production, licensing and distribution. She also provides legal analysis and counseling on copyright and trademark matters.

Representative Matters

• Drafts, negotiates, and reviews agreements related to the development, creation, distribution and exploitation of music, including but not limited to recording artist agreements, music publishing agreements, songwriter and musician services agreement, music producer agreements, featured artist agreements, merchandising agreements, sponsorship and endorsement agreements, touring agreements, and other related licensing and work for hire agreements.
• Drafts, negotiates, and reviews agreements related to the development, production, and distribution of motion picture/TV and video game content, including but not limited to shopping agreements, talent services agreements, life story rights agreements, book options, writer agreements, funding agreements, development agreements, production services agreements, season renewal agreements, content licensing agreements, merchandising agreements, sponsorship and endorsement agreements, and technology and software licensing agreements.
• Served as in-house transactional counsel for a major video game client as part of a temporary secondment arrangement.
• Assists clients in obtaining rights to use music in audiovisual and/or music productions.
• Served as counsel to International Intellectual Property Alliance (a coalition of five copyright-based industry trade associations – RIAA, MPAA, ESA, AAP, and IFTA – comprised of over 3,200 companies in the music, film, book publishing, and entertainment software industries) on international copyright protection and enforcement matters including drafting important government filings such as the annual Special 301 report and several of the United States Trade Representative’s Out-of-Cycle Reviews.
• Assisted in counseling major studio client on theatrical and television rights upon review of documents surrounding prior film productions.
• Represented the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) in the 2018 Copyright Office rule-making proceeding regarding proposed exemptions to an anti-circumvention provision of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Professional, Business and civic Affiliations

• Member, Women’s Bar Association

Other Career Experience

• Student Attorney, WCL Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic 
• Summer Associate, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP
• Legal Intern, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
• Law Clerk, U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals

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