Ron joined MPLC in 2019, after almost 25 years at various divisions of the Twentieth Century Fox movie studio and its parent companies, and 10 years before that at two large Wall Street law firms.
Ron’s first gig at Fox was working in the Home Video division, where he advised on domestic and international antitrust, copyright and trademark issues, and helped develop the content protection technology for pre-recorded DVDs. That led to him being the founding head of a “Content Protection” group in the Fox Entertainment Group Legal Department. This brought together all of the disciplines involved in protecting movie and TV content from piracy in concert with the Motion Picture Association and the other member studios. Ron took the group from 4 people in 2001 to 22 people 15 years later. While working at Fox, Ron became friends with Mike Weatherley, then an MP in the UK Parliament, “IP Czar” to Prime Minister David Cameron, and later CEO of MPLC. Mike hired Ron first as a consultant, then as EVP of Business & Legal affairs and Head of Studio Relations. He was promoted to his current position at MPLC in October 2022.
Fun fact that few people know?
In his first role at Fox, Ron negotiated the acquisition of a straight-to-video movie called “For the Moment” that starred a then little-known actor named Russell Crowe. To publicize the title’s video release, Fox held a special screening featuring Crowe, with whom Ron got to hang out afterwards (he couldn’t have been nicer!)