Matthew Zinn, TiVo’s Senior Vice President of General Counsel, Profiled

A personal profile of Matthew Zinn, TiVo’s Senior Vice President of General Counsel (aka the head of their legal department, originally written for The Recorder has been posted on Law.com. When we think of TiVo we tend to think of the products or the technology, but the legal side of the business is just as important. Contracts don’t negotiate themselves, FCC filings need to be made, and patents aren’t worth anything if you don’t protect them. It’s a fairly standard corporate profile piece, but it gives us a glimpse at the man in charge of TiVo’s legal efforts, more than just a name on an FCC filing. We learn that he was a DJ in college, interned at the FCC and NPR, and worked at Continental Cablevision and MediaOne, before joining TiVo in 2000 as their first in-house lawyer. Now he runs an in-house legal team of six attorneys and a paralegal, plus employing external firms.