An Interview with Sarang Damle, US Copyright Office

AuthorAbioye E. Mosheim
PositionAbioye E. Mosheim is an attorney advisor in the Office of the General Counsel at the US Copyright Office where she specializes in copyright registration and termination issues, 1201, FOIA, and privacy law. She also does pro bono litigation for the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia. Any views expressed here in no way represent the US...
Pages45-47
Published in Landslide® magazine, Volume 10, Number 2, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), ©2017 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This
information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
I didn’t always have an eye on assuming that role, I sort of
lucked into it. I’ve been very lucky in my career in general to get
the jobs that I’ve had. One of the best pieces of advice I got was
this: always keep your eye out for interesting opportunities. Not
necessarily more lucrative opportunities, not necessarily jobs
that move you up the career ladder, but opportunities to work in
interesting jobs with interesting people, because the more expo-
sure you get, the more opportunities that generates.
I came to the Copyright Ofce largely because of the rela-
tionships I’d built over the years. I worked on a number of
copyright cases and IP cases at DOJ. I had left DOJ for CFPB,
but when the then-new general counsel (GC) of the Copyright
Ofce, Jacqueline Charlesworth, was looking for a deputy, she
asked some of my former colleagues at DOJ if they could rec-
ommend anyone who would be interested. They kindly gave her
my name. And so I got a call out of the blue from Jacqueline.
We had never met before. But we went out for coffee and talked
about the job and the many cutting-edge issues in copyright. I
came to the Copyright Ofce never assuming I would one day
An Interview with Sy Damle
General Counsel and Associate
Register of the US Copyright Ofce
By Abioye Ella Mosheim
Sarang (Sy) Damle is the General Counsel and Associate
Register of Copyrights for the US Copyright Ofce. He was
previously an appellate litigator at the Department of Jus-
tice, focused on intellectual property and administrative law
matters. Mr. Damle has been recognized by National Law
Journal for his work, both as one of the top “40 under 40”
minority lawyers in the United States, and as one of Wash-
ington, DC’s “Rising Stars.” He received his JD from the
University of Virginia, where he graduated rst in his class.
To date your career has been exclusively with the US gov-
ernment, including clerking on the First Circuit, the Civil
Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Obama
White House, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB), and now the Copyright Ofce. What led you to
focus your career on public service?
It hadn’t been my plan while I was in law school to go into
public service. I thought that I would, like many people do, for
good reasons, go to a law rm and work in the private sector, start
my career there. Public service wasn’t really on my radar until
I started clerking. I clerked for a really wonderful judge, Judge
Sandra Lynch, on the First Circuit. During my clerkship I saw a
pattern emerge where, in the private disputes, only the most senior
lawyers from prominent law rms were getting to stand up in
court and argue cases. But whenever there was a government case,
often, but not always, it would be a much younger person rep-
resenting the government at the podium. And I was continually
impressed by the quality of these young government attorneys’
work. They were often doing better work than the senior attorneys
at private law rms. That showed me that the best place to get real
world lawyering experience early in my career was the public sec-
tor. I talked to my judge and she encouraged me to apply to DOJ’s
Honors Program. A clerk of hers two years ahead of me was at
DOJ, and he helped guide me through the process. Once there, my
prediction about the sort of selsh benets of public service turned
out to be true. I joined DOJ in around September 2006 and by
April 2007 I was arguing my rst case before the DC Circuit. And
what has kept me in government service after 13 years is the work
is really, really interesting. I get to think about the right answers
to legal problems—what benets the government as a whole and
one hopes, by extension, the American public. That was certainly
true during my entire time at DOJ, it was certainly true during my
time at the CFPB and it has been true here at the Copyright Ofce.
I think only about what is best for the copyright system and what
is best for the American public. That’s something you don’t get as
often when you represent private clients.
How do you think your career path led you to becoming a
general counsel and did you always have an eye on one day
assuming that role?
Abioye E. Mosheim is an attorney advisor in the Ofce of the
General Counsel at the US Copyright Ofce where she specializes in
copyright registration and termination issues, 1201, FOIA, and privacy
law. She also does pro bono litigation for the Legal Aid Society of the
District of Columbia. Any views expressed here in no way represent
the US Copyright Ofce. She can be reached at abmo@loc.gov.

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