Karyn Temple ’97: A Career Committed to Copyright

Karyn Temple ’97 has built a one-of-a-kind career in copyright law.

It flourished during her nine years with the U.S. Copyright Office, from 2011 to 2020, where Temple eventually rose to the role of register and director of copyrights and where she experienced something rare in Washington, D.C.: bipartisanship. “The copyright office, which is a separate department of the Library of Congress, works on behalf of Congress, no matter which party is in the majority, offering members of Congress advice on copyright law and helping to draft copyright legislation,” says Temple, who has testified multiple times before the House of Representatives and the Senate. “I really enjoyed being able to work with members on both sides of the aisle who, regardless of their political differences on other issues, cared about supporting creativity and supporting artists.”

Since leaving the Copyright Office, Temple has continued her work supporting the creative community by overseeing the content-protection efforts of the Motion Picture Association (MPA)—the leading advocate of the global film, television, and streaming industry. Its members currently include Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery.

As senior executive vice president and global general counsel overseeing all of the MPA’s legal affairs, Temple is working at the MPA at a time when the industry faces a host of unprecedented challenges, including from the advent of artificial intelligence. “The laws around copyright and AI are not fully developed,” says Temple, She adds that there are approximately 50 cases currently in U.S. courts that will help determine the legal framework around copyright, AI, and other issues related to fair use.

She’s also battling piracy. “As technology develops, there are new ways for people to steal content,” she says. “A lot of what I do is making sure that the law keeps up with technological advances. You have to try to stay ahead of the pirates because they are going to use the new technology, too.”

Temple’s concerns about these matters—and what it will take to address them—extends worldwide. “Sometimes, [foreign countries] may have a good legal framework, but they don’t have the resources or training in terms of being able to enforce their own copyright laws,” she says. That’s where the MPA steps in. “We do a lot of outreach and trainings with foreign governments.” 

A Natural Fit

“Like a lot of copyright lawyers, I loved reading and writing as a young person,” Temple says. She was inspired by her grandmother, who was an English teacher, and her mother, a French teacher turned lawyer who wrote poems and short stories on the side. At the University of Michigan, Temple majored in English and pursued creative writing but decided not to write full time. Instead, she went to law school, where “copyright law was a natural fit.”

At Columbia Law, Temple was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar all three years. She took Copyright Law with Jane C. Ginsburg, Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law, and had a semester-long internship at NBC, where she gained firsthand knowledge about First Amendment issues. Other Law School experiences—such as spending a summer at the Community Law Centre in South Africa as part of the Human Rights Internship Program, participating in the Fair Housing Clinic, working on the Columbia Law Review as a senior editor, and serving as chair of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA)—proved equally significant. “Some of my closest friends today are my friends from BLSA,” she says. 

After graduation, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit and then entered the Attorney General’s Honors Program at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she worked in the federal programs branch, which defends the United States and its agencies against constitutional challenges. “Obviously, copyright law has a constitutional basis—it’s in the first article of the Constitution—so I was able to do the kind of constitutional law work that is foundational to IP and entertainment work, even when I was not specifically working on copyright issues,” she says.

Learning and Growth

Throughout Temple’s career, she has worked in the public and private sectors and focused on management and advocacy in the field of copyright law. Her professional decisions have enabled her to grow her expertise, learn new skills and knowledge, and solve challenges during key moments.

After three years at the DOJ, Temple joined the D.C. firm Williams & Connolly because of its reputation, she says, as “tremendous litigators that also did work in the entertainment space.” In 2005, she learned that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was looking for an in-house counsel in its litigation department. “In-house litigation positions don’t arise very often. In-house lawyers are usually on the corporate side, so I jumped on the opportunity,” she says. “For the first time, I was able to focus exclusively on copyright litigation seven days a week.”

At the time, the music industry was in turmoil. Temple primarily managed cases at the RIAA, working with outside counsel to develop strategies for the cases they were litigating. “It was an interesting and complex period legally for copyright issues because the internet was really taking off,” she says. “People were doing a lot of what we called ‘file sharing,’ and we were trying to establish the rules of the road for internet law, for what individual consumers could do online, what the liability would be for online services that allowed people to share or transfer digital files to each other. We were very concerned that musicians get paid for their work and with supporting the industry’s viability.” 

After five years at the RIAA, Temple accepted a political appointment as senior counsel to the deputy attorney general of the United States, where she helped run the Department of Justice’s Intellectual Property Task Force, a role she says she enjoyed because “it was more policy than litigation, and I really liked the policy side.” In 2011, she joined the U.S. Copyright Office’s policy division, where she initially focused on the international side of copyright law. When she was promoted to register of copyrights, Temple was able to fully engage to develop and manage the work of 400 employees and multiple departments. 

Moving to the MPA offered additional opportunities, particularly in the areas of new technology and international applications of the law. “That’s what I love about copyright law, actually: You are always learning,” she says. “Copyright law and entertainment law more broadly are places where you will always be able to continue to grow professionally because of the way that the law is ever evolving.” 

The Perks of Being a Copyright Lawyer

Temple says she values being part of the nation’s copyright community; she previously served as an elected trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA and co-chair of its international chapter. “Copyright law is a field where you have very committed, passionate lawyers,” she says. “There are a lot of associations and organizations where you can get together and talk about copyright all day. We even tell copyright jokes.” Many copyright lawyers, she says, are musicians or writers, too. “At copyright events, there is often a ‘copyright band’ that plays.”

She notes, though, for those thinking about rubbing elbows with celebrities, that for the most part, copyright lawyers have little contact with actual artists. “I do tell young lawyers not to go into copyright law because you want to meet actors and musicians, because that’s not a perk, so you really have to be interested in the law first and foremost,” she says. 

That’s not to say that the job is without benefits. “I will say that we have some quote-unquote perks at the Motion Picture Association,” she confides. “We have a screening room, for instance, and get to see a lot of movies before they come out.”