Julie S. Maresca
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT & GENERAL COUNSEL,
MOTION PICTURE LICENSING CORPORATION
LOS ANGELES, CA - USA
6:00 am
The alarm goes off and I get out of bed by 6:30, when my 10-year-old son tells me we’ll be late if I don’t get up.
7:00 am
Shower, get dressed and wrangle my kids to eat and get in the car so we can leave by 7:15 to go to school and then battle the notorious 405 freeway to get to work.
8:00 am
Arrive in the office and the first thing I do is speak with my European colleagues and respond to emails from other time zones. A lot of my time is spent on European matters, so the first and last thing I do at work is concentrate on international developments. Today I speak with outside counsel in Switzerland to understand the specifics of their copyright law. Yesterday was consulation for Denmark.
9:00 am
Meet with company VPs to share information and prioritize work tasks. Since it is the end of the year, I need to prepare my budget, annual objectives and employee reviews. It is also the end of the quarter, which means I am also adding rights and territories to contract amendments.
10:30 am
The perfect time for local conference calls. Today’s call finalizes a licensing deal with one of our members. I bring in the president of licensing to get his perspective. He has been with the company for over 20 years, and communicates clearly that our clients need to license the prolific use of their media in public.
11:00 am
Work time. I try to prepare for our international board meetings but other priorities push in front, including an HR issue.
12:00 pm
A lot of work in Los Angeles is conducted over lunch. It is time consuming but productive. Today, I meet in-house counsel in Burbank. Having the lunch date on the calendar meant they got the contract amendment ready for review. Besides the business aspect of lunches, I enjoy meeting colleagues who I now consider as friends.
1:00 pm
My phone is not working seamlessly. Thank goodness for IT! Now is my chance to write my weekly letters to unwitting infringers of copyright. Most companies do not know that when employees use movies and TV shows in a format originally intended for personal use only (DVDs, downloads, streaming, etc.), that a public performance license is needed when that movie or TV show is exhibited in public.
2:00 pm
Review trademarks and gather information for renewal paperwork. I am a bit of a trademark geek because I proudly register certain trademarks like an “Umbrella License,” which is our well known blanket licensing product.
3:00 pm
Finally get to prepare for board meetings occurring next week.
4:00 pm
Leave work to pick up the kids and watch after-school sports. My 12-year-old daughter plays basketball and my son plays soccer.
5:30 pm
Set up shop at Starbucks during soccer practice to get one project done without interruption. Today it is writing “Day in the Life.”
7:00 pm
Head back home.
8:00 pm
Everyone gets settled, and we eat dinner together. It is usually something thrown together earlier in the day in the crock pot. My husband is a great cook, but doesn’t have time lately because he is starting his own company. I am a terrible cook.
9:00 pm
Conference call with Singapore to discuss universities that publicly show movies for entertainment purposes but are not yet licensed to do so. I then send emails to international partners so they don’t have to wait a day for a response.
10:00 pm
Hopefully “Chicago PD” is on broadcast TV to watch with my husband. We are one of the few households that does not have cable.
11:00 pm
We watch the news and go to sleep.
