Stanford CIS
Anthony Falzone

Anthony Falzone

Tony Falzone is the Deputy General Counsel at Pinterest, Inc.

Prior to joining Pinterest, Tony co-founded CIS’s Fair Use Project, which he led as its Executive Director from 2006 to 2012. In the course of his work at CIS, Tony represented conductor Lawrence Golan in his challenge to Congress's constitutional power to remove works from the public domain, which he argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. He also represented visual artist Shepard Fairey in copyright litigation against The Associated Press over Fairey's "Obama Hope" posters, and represented RDR Books as trial counsel in its copyright and Lanham Act dispute with J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers over the Harry Potter Lexicon. Those cases followed notable victories on behalf of the producers and distributors of the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed in litigation against Yoko Ono Lennon and EMI Records, on behalf of Professor Carol Shloss in her lawsuit against the Estate of James Joyce. Tony also represented a wide array of organizations as amicus curiae in federal appeals courts throughout the country, including The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Creative Commons, and the American Library Association. In addition to litigating, Tony advised dozens of documentary filmmakers, writers, artists and other content creators on fair use and other intellectual property issues.

As a Lecturer in Law, Tony has taught both lecture and clinical courses at Stanford Law School, including Fair Use in Film, Advanced Topics in Cyberlaw, and the Cyberlaw / Fair Use Clinic.

Prior to his work at Stanford, Tony was a litigation partner in the San Francisco office of Bingham McCutchen. He is a 1997 graduate of Harvard Law School, and was a law clerk to the Hon. Barry T. Moskowitz, U.S. District Judge, Southern District of California.

Recent articles

Blog

Stamps, Sculpture and Free Expression

We filed an amicus brief today in Gaylord v. U.S., a potentially important but little-noticed fair use case on appeal in the Federal Circuit. We filed it on beh…

Case

Gaylord v. U.S. Postal Service

The U.S. Postal Service created a commemorative stamp from a photograph of a sculpture called, which is part of the Korean War Veterans’ Memorial in Washington…

Blog

Best Practices for Online Video Video

Last Summer, the Center for Social Media released the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video, a first of its kind document—coordinated by American…

Blog

Fairey Answers The AP's Counterclaims

We filed our answer to The AP's counterclaims yesterday, and it's attached below.  The interesting part is at the end, where we illustrate the double st…

Blog

URAA Held Unconstitutional

We're thrilled to report the Court has upheld our challenge to the constitutionality of the URAA's restoration of copyrights in public domain works. Tod…

Blog

Scrutinizing The URAA

Two years ago, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals broke new ground. It held the URAA's restoration of copyrights in public domain works departed from the &q…