Amanda's 2024 Events at UCL’s Institute of Brand and Innovation Law include:
Privacy and Data: Law and Practice 2 day CPD coursePublic Lecture: AI-enabled crime
About
UK-based Amanda Harcourt has largely devoted her distinguished professional career to the interests, rights and revenues of authors and performers in the US, UK and Europe.
Harcourt’s early film work in the 1980s was complemented by her acting as lead author and editor for a book on the law and trade practices of the independent film and television sector - a text labelled on publication as “ground breaking” by the UK’s Financial Times.
She has a particular expertise in the worldwide collective administration of IP rights and the regulatory regimes of administering bodies (CMOs). This expertise was built initially upon her having conducted a global audit in the early 1990s on behalf of Irish band U2; an enquiry into their collectively administered revenues as both authors and performers. Equivalent forensic work for other music “giants” has followed.
She is retained as legal advisor to the global songwriters & composers’ council, the UK trade body for cinematographers and the UK CMO for film craft workers (film editors, designers & cinematographers).
Harcourt is also retained by a revolutionary new software system that can “read” and analyse over 250 different copyright royalty payer accounting statements & formats. The system’s unique capabilities enable the “cleaning” of copyright metadata and the detailed identification & tracking of the copyrights’ exploitation: revenue sources, territories, the routes of income and the royalty values arising from global exploitation by sub-licensees onward into the ultimate hands of creators and copyright owners.
She held a long term senior level consultancy at global film and television production powerhouse FremantleMedia. There, amongst other duties, she was legal gatekeeper for the international billion dollar music television format, Idols. She has a expertise in format acquisitions & infringement policing and inter-company contracts for global statutory accounting purposes with a good grounding in international withholding tax matters.
Most recently she spearheaded successful US federal litigation in relation to a cult music motion picture which resulted in all rights being returned by the film studio to the control of the original creators.
Harcourt provides her services in relation to copyright matters to Washington D.C. based boutique firm that specialises in structural & senior-level strategic counsel for high-stakes litigation and crisis management: Blue Highway Advisory
For 11 years she was an Adjunct Professor in entertainment law at a US Top Tier university. Currently she is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Brand and Innovation Law at the highly regarded Faculty of Laws at University College London. She designs and chairs events for both public audiences and UCL’s post-graduate students.
