Maria A. Pallante is President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers and a recognized authority on copyright law.  With her talented team, she leads the U.S. publishing industry on matters of public policy, advancing solutions that drive human empowerment, scientific progress, and a vibrant creative economy.  Her areas of focus include protections for publishers and authors, online markets, freedom of expression, international trade, public-private collaborations, and diverse and sustainable business models.

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From 2011 to 2016, Maria served as Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office where she led an extremely active period of statutory and regulatory analysis.  She advised and helped commence the first comprehensive review of the Copyright Act by the Congress in decades, testifying on complex issues of law and technology; highlighting the centrality of authors to the public interest; and conducting rulemakings and roundtables about existing and emerging legal questions.  She represented the United States on treaty and diplomatic delegations involving intellectual property.

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Under Maria’s leadership, the Copyright Office published several key studies that documented and advanced the law, on issues such as the making available right under U.S. law; music licensing; small copyright claims; and digitization, orphan works, and collective licensing, as well as a public index of fair use opinions.  She also led public proceedings to modernize the records, technology, and regulations of the agency itself, to better serve the fast-moving licensing transactions of the digital marketplace.  Notably, Maria produced a complete overhaul of the authoritative Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, making it widely available for the first time as a living digital publication for courts, lawyers, and examiners.  She established the competitive Barbara A. Ringer Honors Fellowship and the Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence.

Maria is a former Trustee of the Copyright Society and a recipient of the DC Bar’s Champion of Intellectual Property Award.  She has delivered numerous distinguished copyright lectures, including the Horace S. Manges Lecture at Columbia; the David Nelson Lectures at Berkeley; the Christopher Meyer Memorial Lecture at George Washington University; the Roger L. Shidler Lecture at Washington University; the Robert W. Kastenmeier Lecture at the University of Wisconsin; and the Copyright Society’s Brace Memorial Lecture. She currently serves on the American Bar Association’s Copyright Task Force, the George Mason University Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy (C-CIP2) Advisory Board, and the Americana Music Foundation Board of Directors.

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Earlier in her career, Maria served for eight years as in-house counsel with the Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, New York, where she advised on governance, publishing, and exhibitions and directed the global licensing and branding program for the institution’s famous name, buildings, and collections.  She began her career in private practice and as a staff attorney with the Authors Guild.  She is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School.

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The U.S. publishing industry serves hundreds of millions of readers a year by investing in and delivering a vast variety of literature and information in both print and digital formats.  These offerings include many of the most innovative services and important works of authorship in the world, including award-winning fiction, children’s literature, political commentary, biography and history books, scientific research, textbooks, learning platforms, study tools, professional content, and research analytics.