Charles ("Chuck") Colman founded Charles Colman Law, PLLC, in January 2011 in order to provide cost-effective, industry-specific legal representation to individuals and companies in fashion, media, new technology, and other creative fields. Chuck previously worked as a litigator at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, where he handled cases involving breach of contract, false advertising, copyright, trademark, and right of publicity, among many other areas of law.
Chuck graduated from Yale College with a B.A. in Linguistics (cum laude, distinction in major), where he also studied the history of art, music, and film. He received his J.D. from Columbia Law School (James Kent Scholar; Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar), where he served as an Articles Editor for the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts and worked as a research assistant for leading copyright scholar Professor Jane Ginsburg.
Chuck often speaks on panels where legal issues in fashion, music, art, and technology are discussed and debated. He has appeared before audiences at theNew York City Bar Association, the New York County Lawyers' Association, the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., the International Association of Lawyers, and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, as well as at Brooklyn Law School, Cardozo Law School, Columbia Law School, Howard Law School, NYU Law School, Penn Law School, and Parsons, The New School for Design. Chuck currently serves as a Lecturer at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In June 2013, he will join the full-time faculty of NYU Law School as an Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering.
Chuck regularly posts on the blog LAW OF FASHION about legal issues of interest to individuals and companies in fashion, media, and art. (The blog's affiliated LinkedIn group, also called LAW OF FASHION, counts among its nearly 2000 members many leading law firm partners and in-house counsel at top fashion corporations.) Chuck has also written for Styleite.com and several other web publications, and contributed articles on intellectual property law to print periodicals like LANDSLIDE (the American Bar Association's bimonthly magazine on IP law) and Intellectual Property Magazine.
Chuck is the author of a chapter on intellectual property law in West's Navigating Fashion Law: Leading Lawyers on Exploring the Trends, Cases, and Strategies of Fashion Law, and will contribute a section on copyright law to the highly anticipated second edition of Barbara Kolsun and Guillermo Jimenez's Fashion Law: A Guide for Designers, Fashion Executives, and Attorneys. Chuck's writing on IP law has also appeared in Professor Alan Nemeth's undergraduate textbook v. (versus): Case Law, Concepts, & American Society (Cognella 2012). Chuck is currently working on a treatise for LexisNexis-Matthew Bender, Colman on Fashion Law, the first installment of which is slated for publication in late 2013.
Chuck has been profiled by Forbes and by top-ranked legal industry blog Above The Law, and has been quoted in publications ranging from fashion industry trade magazines to periodicals for intellectual property law practitioners to mainstream media outlets. His firm's matters have been covered by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and Time, among many other media outlets.
Chuck is active in multiple bar association committees. Since 2010, Chuck has served as the Co-Chair of the Fashion Design Legislation Subcommittee at the American Bar Association, in which capacity he has been responsible for evaluating legislation that would accord copyright-like protection to certain fashion designs. Chuck also sponsored the creation of a Fashion Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association, which first convened in June 2011.
Chuck is admitted to practice law in the State of New York, before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.