Thomas D. Selz
Founding Partner, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz

Thomas D. Selz is a founding partner of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz focusing on entertainment law, copyright and trademark counseling, and motion picture, television, new media and publishing matters. In addition to transactional work from development through production and distribution, Mr. Selz focuses on mergers and acquisitions, secured transactions, private placements and public offerings, and other complex corporate work involving entertainment industry and intellectual property assets. For more than a decade, Mr. Selz has also helped structure international tax-advantaged financing for motion picture and television productions. Working with local counsel, Mr. Selz helped devise financing structures that are now used throughout the industry to permit clients to overcome substantial regulatory and business risks to be able to draw on funds from Canada, Ireland, Australia, and Germany. Mr. Selz is the co-author of the Entertainment Law Treatise, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Editions, Shepard's/ McGraw-Hill, 1983-2003, and of Entertainment Law, Casebook, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Editions, Matthew-Bender, 1984, 1997, 2003. He has been Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law (1977-1993), and at Columbia Law School (1998-present), and is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Member, Copyright Committee, 1978-1981) and the American Bar Association (Member: Section on Patent, Trademark and Copyright Law; Entertainment and Sports Industries Forum Committee, 1979-Present). Mr. Selz was a director of the Independent Feature Project (1986 - 2001), and continues as General Counsel to the organization. Mr. Selz was recently recognized by New York Magazine as one of the New York area's best entertainment lawyers. He was quoted recently in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, and other publications on the posting to the Internet of “Gone With the Wind” by the Australian affiliate of Project Gutenberg in violation of U.S. copyright law. Prior to founding the firm, Mr. Selz worked in the entertainment department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and was associated for three years, doing entertainment work, with Emil, Kobrin, Klein & Garbus. He is a graduate of Cornell University (BA, 1968) and Yale University (JD, 1971).