Arwen R. Johnson

Arwen R. Johnson is a partner specializing in entertainment and employment litigation and class action defense at King & Spalding LLP. Her clients include Netflix, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., Entravision Communications Corp., Postmates Inc., Molina Healthcare Inc., Alden Torch Financial LLC and American Income Life Insurance Co.

She's among the few who have clerked both for U.S. District judge Dean D. Pregerson and, at his suggestion, for his father, the late Harry Pregerson of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "They became like family," she said.

Early in her career, she worked at Caldwell Leslie & Proctor PC, a litigation boutique with numerous entertainment industry clients and learned about copyright infringement, defamation and idea theft litigation. Caldwell Leslie merged with Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in 2017; Johnson was a Boies Schiller partner until joining King & Spalding in 2020.

"Those firms did a lot of entertainment work, so I grew up as a lawyer on studio-side work," Johnson said.

A current major client is Netflix, Inc., which is often the target of copyright infringement and idea theft claims. She is leading the defense for the streaming service and actor Michael B. Jordan in a suit alleging that the hit series "Raising Dion" and the comic book on which it is based infringe the unregistered copyright in the plaintiff's novel.

The complaint seeks $1 billion in damages. Price v. Netflix Inc. 2:22-cv-00627 (C.D. Cal., filed Jan. 28, 2022).

Johnson's motion to dismiss is set for a June hearing. She contends that the plaintiff's work and "Raising Dion" are not substantially similar as a matter of law.

Also for Netflix, Johnson won a dismissal motion for her client in a suit in which the plaintiff alleged that the popular teen series "Outer Banks" infringed his copyright in his 2016 novel. Wooten v. Netflix Inc., 1:20-cv-05166 (N.D. Ga., filed Dec. 21, 2020).

"A fun part of my job is that I get to watch content and analyze it," Johnson said. "We argued that if you read the novel and watch the series, you'd understand they're not similar."

In an earlier case, Johnson led the successful defense for Warner Bros. in a case in which the plaintiff asserted an idea theft claim in alleging that the Ben Affleck thriller "The Accountant" was based on his unpublished novel published in the early 2000s. The plaintiff said he gave a copy of his novel to his wife's cousin, a Hollywood producer who purportedly agreed to pay him if his manuscript was made into a movie. Mosher v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 20STCV11096 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed March 20, 2020).

"We won on a demurrer on statute of limitations grounds," Johnson said. "If you can succeed on demurrer, that's an efficient way to dispose of a case."

- John Roemer