Susan Cleary

Background

About Susan Cleary

Susan Cleary has been a steady industry presence at IFTA for 27 years and serves as IFTA’s General Counsel for 25 years. Cleary focuses on the legal affairs of the American Film Market, international licensing, content financing, production and distribution, content protection, market conditions, government relations, advocacy, corporate law and compliance with data, privacy and consumer protection laws (CCPA, GDPR, etc.). She is an expert in arbitration matters having supervised IFTA Arbitration and its transfer to in 2022. She supervises IFTA Collections, a royalty service for rights’ holders. Cleary served as counsel at the Motion Picture Association representing the Hollywood studios in copyright litigation. She served as production counsel for World of Wonder Productions, an independent producer of television programming who produced the first clip driven reality show Real TV, as well as other scripted and unscripted programming. Cleary began her legal career at Saban Entertainment, Inc. supporting all acquisition and production related agreements on animated and live action television programming including the development, production and distribution of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. From 2011 to 2015 she was named finalist for the Los Angeles Business Journal's Corporate Counsel of the Year Award. In 2016, she was honored by Southwestern Law School as Outstanding Alumna in Entertainment and Media Law. In 2021, Ms. Cleary was named Adjunct Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School. Ms. Cleary completed legal internships with the General Counsels of SAG and Westwood One Radio Network. Born and raised in New Jersey, Cleary began her studies at NYU, transferred to Rutgers University earning a B.A. in political science and M.A. in liberal studies, and a J.D. from Southwestern Law School. Cleary is a member in good standing of the California and District of Columbia Bar Associations and past Chairman of the LA County Bar Association's Entertainment and Intellectual Property Law section. She is licensed in California and DC Courts as well as the US Central District of California, and the US Courts of Appeals, Second and Ninth Circuits. She has been involved in the drafting of Circuit and Supreme Court Amici Briefs in seminal copyright cases - Napster through Aero. Ms. Cleary is certified as a PADI Open Water scuba diver. Ms. Cleary is passionate about preserving nature and has acquired 33 acres of land to grow sequoias, redwoods, oaks, rare ancient bristle cone and bishop pines in the Tehachapi Mountains.