Joshua S. Wattles is Advisor in Chief to deviantART, the world’s largest online community for artists and art enthusiasts, and he has acted as both general counsel for Paramount Pictures and senior intellectual property lawyer for Paramount Communications.

In these roles, Mr. Wattles has managed more than 60 lawyers and was responsible at Paramount for the studio’s highest profile talent, content agreements, and major litigations. Additionally, he advised on intellectual property matters related to film, book publishing, sports, and cable television and was key architect of the film industry’s anti-piracy program. At Paramount he was also the executive in charge of all music including the development of the modern soundtrack album and the management of its music publishing, Famous Music, in its time one of the most prominent independent publishers in the world.

In his subsequent private legal practice, his clients have included motion picture studios, music companies, and new media properties including the World Monuments Fund, Dorothy Hamill, Televisa, Internet entrepreneur Michael Robertson, and J.K. Rowling. He also represented technology developers in the watershed Supreme Court case MGM v. Grokster.

Mr. Wattles currently teaches Advanced Copyright as part-time faculty at the USC Gould School of Law in Los Angeles, CA and has been an adjunct law professor at Southwestern University Law School and Loyola Law School in Los Angeles where he taught courses in Entertainment Law, Copyright Law, Museum and Art Law, and the Music Publishing Industry. He is a past president of the Los Angeles Copyright Society. He holds a J.D. from George Washington University (1978), as well as a B.A. from Mills College (1973, with honors) and is distinguished as its only male undergraduate..