Diane Faber Mediation
peace that makes sense

Diane's substantial private practice experience centered on intellectual property and the entertainment industry. She understands how entertainment and intellectual property disputes play out and where their vulnerabilities are, including whether, why, and how they typically settle. About half of all Diane's mediations have some nexus with copyright, trademark, or trade secret laws, and/or the entertainment industry.

Diane has successfully mediated copyright disputes across the spectrum, including music, motion picture/tv, children's video, books, photography (fine art/commercial/celebrity), fashion and textile design, and technology/software disputes. She has mediated cases arising out of complicated chains of title or rights issues arising under the 1909 Copyright Act, the 1976 Copyright Act, and/or the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (including safe harbor provisions). She has depth of experience with issues of joint authorship, prior art, scenes a faire, protectability of expression/ideas/historical facts, access, substantial similarity, fair use, implied licenses, public performance rights, copyright preemption, and statutes of limitation, and broad familiarity with music sampling claims (hip hop/rap/jazz/"sounds" and "beats").

Diane has resolved trademark cases involving startups and premium brands, similar marks/brands competing in different classes, knock-offs, reverse passing off, trade dress infringement, etc., and has mediated many dozens of co-existence agreements in a wide variety of arenas (wine labels and bottle shapes, reverse-engineered recipes, LED whips, specialty motorcycle software, competing splinter sub-bands from a prior iconic rock group, SMS mobile marketing, 800-numbers and urls).

Represented urban planner against longtime family friend. The two families had jointly purchased a Northern California mountainside with a common access road for the stated purpose of building two estate homes for themselves, and for private development and sale of the remainder. Over four decades, one family subdivided and graded the property, improved part of the road, and built an architecturally unique home; the other family lost interest and secretly sold/gifted its undivided half share in the property to a neighboring open space preserve, impacting his longtime partner’s interest. Settled.

Represented contractor in litigation over delays in the post -1995 earthquake retrofit of a bridge in the Port of Los Angeles. City of Los Angeles was represented by Patty Glaser, then of Christensen, Miller et al. (original demand $100M). Settled.

Represented a large commercial real estate manager/owner in a series of litigations over substantial real estate investments, including (a) a dispute over escrow closing without a contractually-mandated CPI adjustment of the purchase price on a $45M medical building at the corner of Post and Mason in San Francisco (obtained summary judgment against escrow company; settled with buyer); (b) litigation over straight hard-money investment in real estate (settled on the eve of trial); (c) litigation against federal bankruptcy trustee of Ponzi scheme over client’s investment of capital (settled); and (d) litigation over client’s investment in AAA hockey team (settled).

Represented key personnel (including co-founder) who left a $500M property ownership and property management company in a dispute over who owned the rights to certain REO properties (bank owned foreclosures) acquired by related third parties while clients were employed (settled). Among other things, case involved unraveling 8 multiparty (and in some cases, international) real estate transactions. Settled.

Represented developer against City which had calculated the number of buildable units on a parcel of land prior to purchase as 120, but after the purchase closed as zero, only to take the position in related litigation after developer disposed of the property that there “really” had been 120 buildable units.

Santa Monica luxury condo owner’s series of disputes with upstairs neighbor and homeowners’ association concerning leaks, violation of hardwood restrictions, etc. Settled.

Represented purchaser of luxury home in Westwood against seller, where seller removed fixtures and damaged the house during leaseback after sale. Settled.

Boundary line dispute where purchaser wanted to demolish his own building which encroached on a neighbor’s property, but neighbor disagreed. Settled.

Family of child star’s claim against insurance company in connection with dramatic, destructive leak in family home. Settled.

Representative Employment Mediations:

As a mediator, Diane strives for a complete understanding of what went wrong in the employment relationship, to help fashion a nuanced remedy that is acceptable to all parties. Formerly, as a litigator, Diane handled significant cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants in employment disputes. Nearly half of Diane's mediations are employment based.

Diane routinely resolves claims involving race, gender (including pregnancy and pregnancy loss), sexual orientation, and age discrimination, and for harassment, retaliation, constructive discharge, and wrongful termination; disability discrimination, failure to accommodate, failure to engage in the interactive process, and discriminatory animus upon return to work; whistleblower, violations of public policy, and retaliation; breach of contract, compensation and professional defamation; and wage and hour misclassification.

Her experience covers all types of entities and industries (wine distribution, trucking, fast food, manufacturing) and federal state and local governmental entities (post office, ADA's office).

Representative Employment Litigation Experience

For plaintiffs:

Represented female plaintiff personal assistant to CEO of financial services company with claims of sexual harassment and retaliation.

Represented plaintiff writer against production company, talent agency (total of seven defendants and cross-defendants) concerning exploitation of teleplay for limited series without proper compensation.

Represented female in-house attorney against publicly traded company which had allegedly squeezed out a number of senior women. Settled as plaintiff was en route to the EEOC to file the formal complaint.

Represented female in-house attorney against publicly traded company which had allegedly hired, promoted, and favored gay men over other qualified employees.

For defendant:

Defended call-center company against discrimination claim of gay African American employee. Won on summary judgment.

Defended celebrity employer against claim of wrongful discharge from "lifetime employment agreement" with longtime colleague. Settled.

Defended rock star against claim of artists hired to create concert backdrop artwork, over whether they were employees or independent contractors for purpose of copyright law. Settled.

Defended key departing personnel (including co-founder and key employee) against employer claims of ethical breaches during employment. Settled.