May 25, 2021 – Danvers, Mass. – Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a leader in advancing copyright, accelerating knowledge, and powering innovation, will present a Town Hall discussion on Wednesday, 9 June at 10:00 a.m. EDT/3:00 p.m. BST, “The Future of Collective Licensing – Copyright in the Digital Marketplace.”
Known for their individual contributions to business, academia and culture, guest speakers include Lois F. Wasoff, Mark Seeley, and R. Bruce Rich, three leading legal minds with extensive experience in publishing, licensing and copyright. In this moderated panel discussion, the group will field questions about how collective licensing creates efficient markets for copyright, permitting researchers, academics, publishers and others to make uses of copyrighted materials and enabling rightsholders to receive remuneration for the use of their works.
Wasoff, Seeley, and Rich are contributing authors to CCC’s recent eBook, Creating Solutions Together – Lessons to Inform the Future of Collective Licensing. Their essays explain the inextricable link between licensing and publishing, the historic origins of collective licensing, and the establishment of CCC as a resource to help rightsholders and licensees collaborate on solutions that work for everyone.
“Voluntary collective licensing continues to be an important mechanism for making copyright work,” said Tracey Armstrong, President and CEO, CCC. “In the Town Hall program as with the eBook, CCC looks forward to sparking discussion on the future of collective licensing.”
Wasoff is an attorney specializing in publishing law. Before starting her own practice, she held senior in- house positions at Houghton Mifflin Company and Simon & Schuster. Her clients have included CrossRef, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Macmillan, Reed Elsevier and CCC.
Seeley consults on science publishing and legal issues through SciPubLaw LLC. He retired in December 2017 from his position as Senior Vice President & General Counsel for Elsevier. Seeley teaches international intellectual property law as adjunct faculty at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. He is also a CCC board member.
Rich was a senior partner in the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, where he headed the firm’s intellectual property and media litigation practice for more than 30 years. He began serving as outside counsel to CCC in 1980 and continues in the dual role of advising counsel and Board member. He is currently Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI). Rich serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of EL Education, Inc., a not-for-profit educational reform organization that seeks to improve the quality of K-12 public education through training teachers in schools and school districts nationwide to achieve with their students strong academics, critical thinking skills, collaborative and participatory learning, and character development.