Timothy B. Yoo

Timothy B. Yoo is a principal and an intellectual property litigator at Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks, Lincenberg & Rhow PC. In addition to his JD, he holds a bachelor’s degree in applied and computational mathematics.

He joined the firm in 2015 after working overseas as senior counsel for international legal affairs at a large entertainment and media conglomerate in Seoul, Korea, CJ E&M. Often at issue were claims involving the massively popular K-pop culture.

“That was a great experience,” Yoo said. “And I’ve been able to leverage that for my Korean media clients here.”

Plus, he met the woman who’d become his wife, a business analyst at the Seoul conglomerate who worked on several matters with him. “There was a K-pop concert in Jakarta and the promoter was jerking us around. She and I were at the resulting arbitration in Singapore. Now, we speak Korean at home and I’ve gotten fluent.”

Yoo successfully defended K-pop group BTS and its record label HYBE Corp. in a $30 million copyright infringement suit by a plaintiff who alleged that the idea for the BTS reality show “I-Land” was stolen from his treatment for a television series concept titled Island Hip-Hopping. Kahn v. CJE and M America Inc. et al., 2:21-cv-03230 (C.D. Cal., filed April 14, 2021).

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee of Los Angeles agreed with Yoo that the plaintiff’s claims lacked sufficient similarity with elements of the “I-Land” show for infringement. Gee dismissed the case with prejudice after Yoo sent into her chambers downloads from YouTube of his client’s 12-part show. “Her opinion made it obvious that she’d watched the show,” Yoo said. “I hope she enjoyed it. Copyright doesn’t protect ideas.”

A co-defendant in the Kahn case was Yoo’s former employer, CJ E&M. He next successfully represented a joint defense group of other major Korean media companies in a copyright infringement suit filed by the son of a Korean composer of that country’s version of folk music, Jae-Ho Lee. Beom Su Lee v. TV Chosun Corp. et al., 2:22-cv-00933 (C.D. Cal., filed Feb. 10, 2022).

The complaint alleged that the defendants improperly distributed the music in the U.S. Yoo argued that merely uploading the music to the internet wasn’t sufficient to show purposeful direction to the U.S. market. The judge dismissed three successive versions of the complaint.

“I’m proud of the through line these cases represent in my career,” Yoo said. “It’s a privilege to represent Korean media in the U.S.”

—John Roemer