Intellectual Property Law

Couture in Court 7Counterfeit Chic

Posted on April 17, 2008
For those who prefer briefs to boxers, a periodic collection of fashionable events in the judicial system: Capsized: New Era challenges Mike23Nike also objects to MikeCloseup look at a "tribute brand"Hot Pink: Victoria's Secret objects to Intertex's PinkishOh Baby: Phat Fashion sues Victoria's Secret in trademark disputeNaughty Knickers in a twist: Spanx smacks rival Spank brandSpace invader: Smartwool aims to shoot down Smart WoolDogg muzzled after biting WranglerCollege daze: Juicy Couture puts the squeeze on Juicy CampusThink mink: TTABlog scopes out the Mink Bikini decisionDouble down: Appeals court rules against Ralph Lauren in U...

The Federal Shield LawLegal Talk Network - Law News and Legal Topics

Posted on April 17, 2008
The Federal Shield Law is pending in Congress. Meanwhile, reporters have come under fire for protecting the privacy of their sources resulting in jail time and high fines. Join Law.com bloggers and co-hosts J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi as they explore the shield law with the experts: Lucy Dalglish, Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Geoffrey R...

Woman Sues Blockbuster For Telling All Her Facebook Friends What She Was Renting [Beacon]Consumerist

Posted on April 17, 2008
Facebook's Beacon has finally resulted in a lawsuit. A Texas woman has sued Blockbuster for participating in Beacon, claiming that "Blockbuster violated the federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act by sharing information about her movie rentals and sales with Facebook without first obtaining her written consent," says MediaPost...

Oregon state sends cease-and-desists for republishing statutesWaxy.org Links

Posted on April 16, 2008
they claim copyright on the typesetting and numbering of the documents, not the text of the statutes themselves  

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San Francisco tomorrow: Copyright in a Hyper Digital Age: Copyrights? Copyleft? What rights are left?Creative Commons » CC News

Posted on April 16, 2008
Many events featuring CC in California over the next and past few days. The CC Salon Los Angeles starts in an hour. On Sunday I spoke at Lugradio Live USA (slides), as did CC-enabled record label Magnatune?s founder, John Buckman (his slides). Given that Lugradio Live is primarily a Linux conference, we each did a take on open source and open content...

San Francisco tomorrow: Copyright in a Hyper Digital Age: Copyrights? Copyleft? What rights are left?Creative Commons ?? CC News

Posted on April 16, 2008
Many events featuring CC in California over the next and past few days. The CC Salon Los Angeles starts in an hour. On Sunday I spoke at Lugradio Live USA (slides), as did CC-enabled record label Magnatune???s founder, John Buckman (his slides). Given that Lugradio Live is primarily a Linux conference, we each did a take on open source and open content...

Introducing... the IP Finance BlogIMPACT®

Posted on April 10, 2008
Looking across the blog rolls on some the other law blogs recently, I found the IP Finance Blog. This:"looks at financial issues for intellectual property rights: securitisation and collateral, IP valuation for acquisition and balance sheet purposes, tax and R&D breaks, film and product finance, calculating quantum of damages--anything that happens where IP meets money...

Wal-Mart learns a painful copyright lessonThe Patry Copyright Blog

Posted on April 10, 2008
The Wall Street Journal had a front page story by Gary McWilliams yesterday entitled "Candid Camera: Troves of Videos Vexes Wal-Mart." The story doesn't use the word copyright, but copyright is the key element of the story. The story begins:For nearly 30 years, Wal-Mart Stores Inc...

Introducing... the IP Finance BlogIMPACT??

Posted on April 10, 2008
Looking across the blog rolls on some the other law blogs recently, I found the IP Finance Blog. This:"looks at financial issues for intellectual property rights: securitisation and collateral, IP valuation for acquisition and balance sheet purposes, tax and R&D breaks, film and product finance, calculating quantum of damages--anything that happens where IP meets money...

Universal Music: it's illegal to throw away the promo CD we sent you without your permissionBoing Boing

Posted on April 09, 2008
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann sez, "In a brief filed in federal court yesterday, Universal Music Group (UMG) states that, when it comes to the millions of promotional CDs ('promo CDs') that it has sent out to music reviewers, radio stations, DJs, and other music industry insiders, throwing them away is 'an unauthorized distribution' that violates copyright law...

Wireless Companies Say that they Can Censor Your Speech--Tell the FCC They Can't!Public Knowledge - Blogging, Events, and Action Alerts

Posted on April 09, 2008
This Monday, April 14, is the deadline for submitting reply comments to the FCC on the issue of whether wireless phone companies should be able to block text messages based on their source or content. Several months ago, Public Knowledge, Free Press and a number of other organizations filed a petition asking the FCC to declare such practices to be illegal...

Section 108 Study GroupKevin Heller's Friends' Facebook Posts

Posted on April 09, 2008
Section 108 Study Grouphttp://www.section108.gov/Information about the Section 108 Study Group.The report of the Section 108 Study Group is now available; both the full report and an executive summary are up at http://www.section108.gov/---The Section 108 Study Group is a select committee of copyright experts charged with updating for the digital world the Copyright Act's balance between the rights of creators and copyright owners and the needs of libraries and archives...

Universal Music: it's illegal to throw away the promo CD we sent you without your permissionBoing Boing

Posted on April 09, 2008
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann sez, "In a brief filed in federal court yesterday, Universal Music Group (UMG) states that, when it comes to the millions of promotional CDs ('promo CDs') that it has sent out to music reviewers, radio stations, DJs, and other music industry insiders, throwing them away is 'an unauthorized distribution' that violates copyright law...

Swinging for the Bleachers and Striking OutThe Patry Copyright Blog

Posted on April 08, 2008
Given that Section 301 of the Copyright Act preempts equivalent state law causes of actions and remedies, state courts can not hear claims brought directly under the Copyright Act, or what are really copyright claims dressed up in the sheep?s clothing of a state claim, like unfair competition via mere copying of a work (protected or not)...

EFF Asks Court to Limit What Is PatentableThe Electronic Frontier Foundation | Deeplinks Blogs

Posted on April 08, 2008
In re Bilski is an appellate court case that provides an opportunity to eliminate business method patents and curtail efforts to claim monopolies on basic human skills, behaviors, and interactions. Bilski is challenging the rejection of his application for a patent on a method of managing the risk of bad weather through commodities trading...

Center for Intellectual Property 8th Annual Intellectual Property SymposiumPublic Knowledge - Blogging, Events, and Action Alerts

Posted on April 07, 2008
UMUC Inn and Conference Center Adelphi, Maryland Join the University of Maryland University College?s Center for Intellectual Property for its annual symposium exploring the relationship between the U.S. copyright monopoly, technological innovation and higher education institutions...

Second Life - A New Dimension for Trademark Infringement, by Max VernTarlton Law Library Current Trademark Literature

Posted on April 07, 2008
90 Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society 51 (2008)

Blawg of the Day -- CultureLibre.caInter Alia

Posted on April 07, 2008
CultureLibre.ca is a Canadian blog -- French Canadian, to be precise. It's published by Olivier Charbonneau, a professional librarian and researcher at Concordia University. He's discussing a number of legal issues here, including the Internet, intellectual property, digital life, libraries, and more...

Seventh Circuit Vacates Google's Judgment Against Stoller CompaniesThe TTABlog®

Posted on April 07, 2008
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has vacated the March 15, 2007 judgment entered by the Chicago federal district court in Google's RICO lawsuit against Leo Stoller's companies, Central Mfg. Inc. and Stealth Industries, Inc. The appellate court ruled (here) that the lower court had erred in denying Leo Stoller's motion to intervene (TTABlogged here), and it returned the case to the district court for reconsideration of Stoller's motion...

Judge Posner?s ?How Judges Think?The Patry Copyright Blog

Posted on April 07, 2008
To call Judge Richard Posner prolific is an obvious and trite truism. I have a whole shelf devoted to his books (I have 15 of his 24 books), and am proud to add his most recent one, ?How Judges Think,? available here, at amazon.com for $19.77, and here, at Barnes and Noble...

How OK Go Benefited from Net NeutralityWaxy.org Links

Posted on April 07, 2008
NYT op-ed by their lead singer [via] 

Seventh Circuit Vacates Google's Judgment Against Stoller CompaniesThe TTABlog??

Posted on April 07, 2008
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has vacated the March 15, 2007 judgment entered by the Chicago federal district court in Google's RICO lawsuit against Leo Stoller's companies, Central Mfg. Inc. and Stealth Industries, Inc. The appellate court ruled (here) that the lower court had erred in denying Leo Stoller's motion to intervene (TTABlogged here), and it returned the case to the district court for reconsideration of Stoller's motion...

Facebook Scrabble: Like Scrabulous, Except You Can't PlaySilicon Alley Insider

Posted on April 06, 2008
Mattel and RealNetworks have released a legal version of Scrabble for Facebook. Who cares? Brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who have created Scrabulous, a very popular knock-off version of the game for the social network. When last we checked in on the Agarwallas, they were supposedly negotiating with Mattel, Real (RNWK), Hasbro and Electronic Arts (ERTS), all of whom have rights to the game...

Subpoenas to bloggersLIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®

Posted on April 05, 2008
Walter Olson rounds up blogosphere reaction to the now-famous ?Seidel subpoena,? which kind of underwhelmed me but evidently has everyone else up in arms. New Hampshire blogger Kathleen Seidel, whose weblog Neurodiversity presents a fearless, systematically researched, and frequently brilliant ongoing critique of autism vaccine litigation...

Global minilinks for 2008-04-05The Electronic Frontier Foundation | Deeplinks Blogs

Posted on April 05, 2008
Chaos Computer Club Publishes German Official's FingerprintSnatched from a glass left after a talk, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble's fingerprint is now (irrevocably) the biometric of choice for German pranksters... A Technical Guide to PhormThe Foundation for Information Policy Research's Richard Clayton analyses exactly how Phorm works -- including fake cookies for every website you visit, and fake HTTP redirects every time you visit a new site...

Subpoenas to bloggersLIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION??

Posted on April 05, 2008
Walter Olson rounds up blogosphere reaction to the now-famous ???Seidel subpoena,??? which kind of underwhelmed me but evidently has everyone else up in arms. New Hampshire blogger Kathleen Seidel, whose weblog Neurodiversity presents a fearless, systematically researched, and frequently brilliant ongoing critique of autism vaccine litigation...

University of Colorado to host discussion between EFF attorneys and RIAA lawyer on April 9thRecording Industry vs The People

Posted on April 04, 2008
On April 9th, the University of Colorado will be hosting a discussion featuring EFF attorneys Cindy Cohn and Fred von Lohmann and the RIAA's litigation attorney Richard L. Gabriel, entitled "The War on "Piracy": A Fight for Industry Survival or a Failed Approach?"Refreshments will be served...

Facebook LawsuitFimoculous.com

Posted on April 04, 2008
So a judge ruled yesterday that Facebook must defend itself against the charge of stealing the initial code for the site. I suspect this won't go much further, but I could be wrong -- and if I am, doesn't this somehow remind of you of the Microsoft antitrust case of the '90s?

Hillary's Short TakePatent Prospector

Posted on April 04, 2008
During a Pennsylvania campaign stop, Hillary Clinton spoke as if opposed to the pending Patent Reform Act. Asked by a local inventor, Clinton reportedly said she opposes anything in the bill that would hurt manufacturers, noting that New York manufacturers oppose the bill...

US Judiciary opts to spend millions on accessing its own records, which are now available on the Web for freeBoing Boing

Posted on April 04, 2008
Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, Some days, the U.S. government truly astounds. At Public.Resource.Org, we released 50 years of decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Knowing that the U.S. Courts have to pay big bucks to West Law and Lexis/Nexis to access their own archives, we though they might be interested in having their very own copy...

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