Richard L. Ravin has completed a two-year term as Chair of the New York State Bar Association’s 2,000-plus-member Intellectual Property Law Section in June 2006. Mr. Ravin is the Section’s past (founding) Co-Chair of the Internet Law Committee. He heads the Internet and Intellectual Property Law Practice of Hartman & Winnicki, P.C., with offices in Paramus New Jersey and New York City. Mr. Ravin also practices Commercial Litigation, Bankruptcy Law and Business Law.
Mr. Ravin is a frequent speaker for the NJ and NY State Bar Associations on legal issues pertaining to the Internet, Technology, and Intellectual Property (e.g. trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, patents). In May, he was Panel Chair for a Continuing Legal Education presentation to NJ and NY lawyers about Internet privacy issues, the new Federal CAN-SPAM Act, liability for music file-sharing, online defamation suits against anonymous authors, and use of false and misleading domain names and trademarks. Recently, Mr. Ravin was Program Co-Chair of the “U.S. Copyright Office Comes To New York” conference at the Cardozo School of Law, as well as a panelist, discussing liability for music file-sharing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Mr. Ravin’s articles on technology law are frequently published, and recently include: “Lanham Act For Lenders”, in New Jersey Lawyer Magazine (February 2004), and “Contributory Copyright Infringement For Music File Sharing: Grokster v. Aimster”, State Bar News, (November 2003). Mr. Ravin’s articles are available on his Web site: www.ravin.com, including an article about anonymous online speech and the Eye on Emerson case.
In recent years, Mr. Ravin successfully defended “John Doe” defendants in the Eye on Emerson case, in which former members of the Emerson Borough Town Council and other public figures sued the anonymous online posters to a community Web site for alleged defamation. The court granted Mr. Ravin’s motion to quash the subpoenas issued to the Internet Service Provider of the electronic chat room on First Amendment grounds, thereby denying the politicians the ability to learn the identities of their critics. Mr. Ravin convinced the court that the First Amendment protects not only the right to speak freely, but anonymously as well, and that before Plaintiffs have the right to seek the identities of their critics, they must prove that the statements made online were defamatory.
Mr. Ravin is admitted to practice law in New Jersey, New York, Florida and the District of Columbia, as well as several U.S. District Courts. He is a graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications (1978) and earned his Juris Doctor degree from Shepard Broad Law Center, Nova Southeastern University (1986), and thereafter, clerked for the Presiding Judge for Administration of the Appellate Division, New Jersey Superior Court.
Mr. Ravin is a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Internet and Computer Law Committee and the American Bar Association, and is a Master of the John C. Lifland Intellectual Property Law Inn of Court.