Ben Sheffner

Senior Vice President & Associate General Counsel, Copyright & Legal Affairs, Motion Picture Association, Inc.
@bensheffner

Ben Sheffner is Senior Vice President & Associate General Counsel, Copyright & Legal Affairs, at the Motion Picture Association, Inc., where he specializes in copyright and other intellectual property policy and runs the MPA’s amicus brief program. Ben also serves as counsel to the MPA Title Registration Bureau and manages the association’s trademark portfolio. Prior to joining the MPA in 2011, Ben held in-house legal positions at NBCUniversal and Twentieth Century Fox, and worked as an associate in the Century City office of O’Melveny & Myers LLP, where he litigated copyright and other cases for major movie studios, television networks, and record labels. In 2008, Ben served as Special Counsel on Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, where, among other responsibilities, he handled the campaign’s copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property issues. Ben served as a law clerk for the Hon. M. Margaret McKeown on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2000-2001.

Ben has served as a Trustee of the Los Angeles Copyright Society and Copyright Society of the USA, and serves as an Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Copyright project. He also served on the Uniform Law Commission committee that drafted a uniform anti-SLAPP statute, which was promulgated by the ULC in 2020.

Prior to attending law school, Ben worked as a political reporter in Washington, DC for the Cook Political Report and Roll Call newspaper, where he covered congressional elections, the term limits movement, campaign finance reform, and various other issues related to Congress’ internal politics and administration. Ben received an A.B. from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).

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