Charles E. Colman

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, music, art, media, and new technology.  Chuck was previously a litigation associate at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, where he handled cases involving breach of contract, fraud, false advertising, trademark, and copyright, among many other areas of law.

Chuck has been an active voice in the emerging field of "fashion law."  From 2010 to 2013, he served as the Co-Chair of the Fashion Design Legislation Subcommittee at the American Bar Association. Chuck is also the sponsor of the newly created Fashion Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association.

In 2011 and 2012, Chuck was invited to deliver a series of guest lectures to BFA students at Parsons, The New School for Design. In Spring 2013, he co-taught an undergraduate course, "International Business Strategies and Fashion Law," at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, alongside FIT's Director of Entrepreneurship (and former CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels) Henry Welt.  In June 2013, Charles joined the full-time faculty of NYU School of Law; in January 2014, he took on the additional role of Faculty Fellow in NYU's Costume Studies M.A. Program.

Chuck regularly posts on the blog LAW OF FASHION, addressing 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 4,700 members many leading law firm partners and in-house counsel from around the world.)  Chuck has also had articles published (or accepted for future publication) by the University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online, the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology Digest, and numerous other publications.  His first book, on the social history of design patents, will be published by Cambridge University Press in late 2016.

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 contributed 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 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 IP attorneys to mainstream media outlets both in the U.S. and abroad. His firm's matters have been covered by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and Time, among other prominent publications.

Chuck graduated from Yale College with a B.A. in Linguistics (cum laude, distinction in major), and 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.  Chuck is admitted to practice law in New York and before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.