Heidi Howard Tandy

Heidi Tandy (heidi8) is an attorney with a focus on intellectual property and internet law; she is Of Counsel for Intellectual Property at the law firm of Price Benowitz LLP.

Her legal background includes over 20 years of practice in the areas of intellectual property - specifically trademarks, copyrights and transformative use issues - as well as social media law, the new GDPR privacy regulations promulgated by the European Community, reputation protection, privacy policies, fair use issues, COPPA compliance, terms of use, employee social media policies, contracts and licenses, domain name disputes, DMCA takedown prosecution and defense, "fan law" and more.

She thrives on creative disruption of - and solutions to - innovative issues involving creative content, privacy and social media.

In the summer of 2016, Heidi taught a ground-breaking class on Social Media Law at Whittier Law School in Southern California, and has been involved with various amicus curiae and public comments on intellectual property issues. She has spoken on panels at INTA, SXSW, the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, DragonCon and Princeton University.

Heidi has worked with content creators, technology builders, playwrights, individual business owners and large corporations to successfully protect her clients’ copyrights and trademarks without overstepping into the Fair Use rights of third parties. Her clients are in industries as wide-ranging as retail stores, large and small residential and leisure properties; creators of music, novels, cosmetics, events, online serieses, websites, PR and apps.

Heidi has been a "fandom lawyer" for over fifteen years, and is one of the essayists featured in FIC: How Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World (edited by Anne Jamison).

She's been a list mod, site founder, fandomy reporter, con organizer, Comic-Con panel coordinator, fanfic writer, vidder, reccer and curator, founding member of the Organization for Transformative Works' legal committee and founder/writer at  which examines legal issues that impact social media and tumblr users, including follow-on creatives.

Her 2014 San Diego Comic Con panel with Orlando Jones (Sleepy Hollow), Misha Collins (Supernatural), Flourish Klink (The Alchemists), Dr. Henry Jenkins (USC) and Aron Levitz (Wattpad) is available as a podcast on iTunes here.

She is admitted in New York State and Florida.