Sarang (“Sy”) Damle Named General Counsel
Issue No. 631 - July 18th, 2016
Register of Copyrights Maria A. Pallante has announced that Sarang (“Sy”) Damle will serve as General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights at the United States Copyright Office, effective July 31, 2016. Damle has served as Deputy General Counsel since January 2015. He succeeds Jacqueline C. Charlesworth, who has served with distinction in the general counsel role since July 2013.
Charlesworth, who is greatly respected throughout the government and greater intellectual property bar, is relocating to New York, where she resided before joining the Office in May 2012 as Senior Counsel to the Register. During her tenure, she built a highly qualified legal staff, oversaw Supreme Court and other litigation matters on behalf of the Office, and produced the highly regarded reports, Copyright Small Claims (2013), and Copyright and the Music Marketplace (2015).
Damle holds engineering and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he graduated first in his class. As Deputy General Counsel, he has shared responsibility for managing the department and carrying out the legal portfolio of the Copyright Office. In 2015, the National Law Journal named Damle as one of its “Rising Stars: Washington’s 40 Under 40.”
“Sy is a talented attorney with a long record of public service,” said Register Pallante. “He brings a strong background in both copyright law and technology to the position, and will be an astute leader and trusted advisor on the many complex issues that arise daily under the Copyright Act and related regulations.”
Damle served for nearly seven years as an appellate litigator in the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, where he acted as lead counsel in over 40 appeals focusing on intellectual property, separation of powers, and administrative law matters, and also completed a detail to the White House. Immediately prior to joining the Copyright Office, he served for eight months as senior counsel in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Damle began his legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable Sandra L. Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Prior to attending law school, Damle was a software developer.
