Chris founded the firm in Los Angeles in 2005 and moved the firm to Austin in 2011. He works on a variety of transactional matters in the nexus of music, technology and policy. (See “What We Do”). His most recent public policy study for the World Intellectual Property Organization is available here. His most recent U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief in Google v Oracle is available here and op-ed on the case is available here. His most recent Copyright Office comment on the Unclaimed Royalties Study is available here and his most recent comment to the Copyright Royalty Board on the frozen mechanicals crisis is available here. His law journal article “Defiance or Collaboration: The Role of the Presidential Signing Statement in MLC Board Appointments” is here.
Chris is a frequent speaker at professional conferences, including for the American Bar Association, the state bar associations of California, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee and Texas, and the Austin Bar Association, Beverly Hills Bar Association, California Copyright Conference, Copyright Society of the USA, the Dallas Bar Association and the Nashville Bar Association. He has testified on artist rights issues at the UK Parliament, briefed the National Association of Attorneys General about brand sponsored piracy, spoken at Congressional seminars and lectures at law schools and business schools in the US and Canada on music-tech issues and artist rights including American University, Hastings College of the Law, University of Georgia Terry College of Business, Osgoode Hall, UCLA School of Law and Anderson Graduate School of Management, and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
Chris was the founding chair of the Austin-Toronto Music City Trade Alliance, a cooperative effort of the Austin and Toronto city councils to promote commercial music business trade between the U.S. and Canada. Chris is the director of the Texas Entertainment Law Institute and is the Legislative Chair of the Entertainment & Sports Law Section of the State Bar of Texas. In 2005, Chris was elected as a fellow of the World Technology Network. He received the 2016 Texas Star Award from the State Bar of Texas. His current speaking engagements are here.
Prior to founding the firm he was SVP and General Counsel to SNOCAP in San Francisco, of counsel to Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto and Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp in Los Angeles, SVP Business Affairs at Sony Music in New York, and VP Business Affairs at A&M Records in Hollywood.
Chris is an MBA graduate of the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management and a JD graduate of the UCLA School of Law where he was a member of the UCLA Law Review and an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He was an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law where he taught The Music Business in the Digital Millennium. Before law school, Chris graduated with high honors from UCLA, majoring in political theory. He is admitted to the bar in California and Texas.
Chris Castle writes the MusicTech. Solutions blog.
