Meaghan Kent is a seasoned intellectual property (IP) litigator and counselor. She frequently advises media, consumer product, and software companies, among others, on IP protection, risks, and claims. She counsels clients on the development and protection of IP portfolios, including copyright registration, licensing, clearance, fair use analysis, and establishing efficient enforcement strategies to monitor and abate online infringement. Meaghan has a particular focus on issues unique to online content providers, including Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Communications Decency Act legal immunities for user-generated content and liability arising from linking, sharing, distributing, embedding, moderating, and aggregating content.
Meaghan concentrates her litigation practice on copyright, trademark, right of publicity, and related disputes in federal court and has comprehensive litigation experience, including bench and jury trials and appeals. She also has experience representing clients before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, International Trade Commission, World Intellectual Property Organization, and National Arbitration Forum.
Meaghan has a robust practice related to artificial intelligence (AI), advising clients on use of AI generally and generative AI specifically, including AI policies, generative AI tool development and use, and the development, use, and license of datasets. As just one example, Meaghan works closely with a large software company related to its use of content to train its generative AI tools, including establishing policies, setting terms, fair use analysis, and claim and dispute resolution.
Meaghan recently spoke at an event co-hosted by the US Copyright Office on the “Artificial Intelligence and Copyright” panel that provided an overview of litigation, policy, legislative, and regulatory issues regarding AI and copyrights, including the use of copyrighted works to train models, the question of whether generative AI outputs constitute copyright infringement, and the question of how much human authorship is needed to copyright AI-assisted outputs.
Meaghan’s experience in resolving online disputes includes cyberpiracy and domain name matters; keyword advertising, meta tagging, and click fraud matters; publicity matters involving social media; and large-scale brand enforcement and protection.
Meaghan is a co-leader of Morgan Lewis’s Aerospace and Defense Industry Group and works with many clients in this space regarding IP portfolio protection and enforcement, including work related to anti-counterfeiting and enforcement against counterfeiters. In a recent case, she represented a leading defense contractor in enforcing pseudonymously against a counterfeiter that was selling counterfeit parts to the US military, obtaining a preliminary and then permanent injunction and significant monetary settlement, while working alongside colleagues to facilitate the government’s criminal enforcement against the counterfeiters.
Meaghan is the author of the legal practice guide, An Associate’s Guide to the Practice of Copyright Law, first published by Oxford University Press in 2009, and now updated annually by LexisNexis. She was an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, where she taught legal writing and IP litigation legal drafting and advised students on the AIPLA Quarterly Journal. She has also been a guest lecturer on copyright litigation for an art law course at American University Law School.
Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, Meaghan was co-chair of the IP litigation–advertising, brand, and copyright group at another global law firm.
Recommended, Intellectual Property: copyright, The Legal 500 US (2024)
Recommended, Intellectual Property: Trade secrets (litigation and non-contentious matters), The Legal 500 US (2023)
International Trademark Association, Legislation and Regulation Committee (2022–2025); Anticounterfeiting Committee (2020–2022)
Member, Copyright Society of the USA
Member, American Bar Association
Member, American Intellectual Property Law Association
Member, District of Columbia Bar, Intellectual Property Section
Founding member, DC/MD/VA Chapter of Women in Toys
Rising Star, Intellectual Property, Washington, DC, Super Lawyers (2014–2015)