Intellectual Property Law

Pac Man Redux

Posted on May 01, 2009
Via Bill McGeveran, secret law prof superhero (whoops). No Tags

Me, Myself, and the Public Domain

Posted on May 01, 2009
On the one hand, fantasy sports leagues are slowly confirming their legal right to use names and statistics of professional athletes as part of their businesses, without compensating the players, their teams, or the leagues. Bloomberg reports that CBS Interactive has prevailed on this point over the NFL Players Assocation...

Scalia?s Views of Privacy Apparently Change When His Personal Information is at Stake

Posted on April 30, 2009
From the ABA Journal: Last year, when law professor Joel Reidenberg wanted to show his Fordham University class how readily private information is available on the Internet, he assigned a group project. It was collecting personal information from the Web about himself...

?U.S. Targets Canada Over Copyright in Special 301 Report?

Posted on April 30, 2009
That’s the title of a new post by notorious international copyright subversive Michael Geist, which reports: The U.S. Trade Representative released its Special 301 report today, in which it casts judgement on the intellectual property laws of dozens of countries around the world...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Sewing Machine Commons

Posted on April 30, 2009
Check out Adam Mossoff’s post at Volokh (and the comments), discussing his recent paper, A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket. The paper is a terrific example of a case study of the emergence of a commons (in this case, a patent pool) as a resolution to a packet [...

Music Via the Internets

Posted on April 30, 2009
Playing For Change | Song Around The World “Stand By Me” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo. No Tags

Comedy is a Serious Business

Posted on April 30, 2009
Late last year the Virginia Law Review published a provocative and entertaining article by Dotan Oliar and Christopher Sprigman on copyright law and the social norms of stand-up comics. There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy, 94 Va...

MARBLECAKE ALSO THE GAME

Posted on April 29, 2009
Time Magazine’s “World’s Most Influential Person” poll got hacked. Detailed account of same here. No Tags

Posner on the obviousness of a generally lubricous glass-based material containing an appreciable amount of an oxide of boron.

Posted on April 27, 2009
Check out “Judge Posner at the Federal Circuit: Patent on Sex Aid is Obvious” at Patently-O if you want to read about Posner’s take on the patentability of adapting easy-slide thermometer materials for use on sex toys. Here’s the abstract of what was formerly an enforceable patent: A sexual aid comprising a cylindrical rod is disclosed...

More Thoughts About On Demand Printing

Posted on April 27, 2009
Ann Bartow’s post about the Espresso on demand printing press highlights that change takes time. Ann’s post notes a Guardian article touting the machine as revolutionary and that a publisher in the U.K. launched a service based on the machine in the past few days...

David Post on his new book: ?In Search of Jefferson?s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace?

Posted on April 27, 2009
No Tags

Creativity, Law and Entrepreneurship Workshop at Wisconsin

Posted on April 27, 2009
On Friday I was in lovely Madison, Wisconsin for the Creativity, Law and Entrepreneurship Workshop which Shubha Ghosh put together and was sponsored by UW Law School, the Institute for Legal Studies, the Initiative for Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship (INSITE), and the Global Legal Studies Center...

?Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London?

Posted on April 27, 2009
The machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait. From The Guardian: It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy ? it looks like a large photocopier ? but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than [...

Swine Flu Goes Viral

Posted on April 27, 2009
Via. No Tags

Newman! World Digital Library Misses Legal Opportunity

Posted on April 23, 2009
So when I first encountered the WDL, I was excited. I did, however, have a lingering question about the intellectual property laws involved. I scanned the page and found the infamous Legal link at the bottom of the page. I clicked. And then the moment of “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” vanished...

Small Businesses in the Offline World

Posted on April 22, 2009
I recently wrote about online regulations and small business. Today, I have another example of small business struggling to meet its legal obligations. It is a local outdoor movie theater here is San Diego. It is called Tops Presents. With zero-gravity recliners, great movies, a good screen, excellent sound, and the warm San Diego sky [...

INTERNET-AGE WRITING SYLLABUS AND COURSE OVERVIEW.

Posted on April 22, 2009
ENG 371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era M-W-F: 11:00 a.m.?12:15 p.m. Instructor: Robert Lanham Course Description As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new literary age, one in which writers no longer need to feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and excessive use of words traditionally associated with the [...

?The Backlash Tracker: Build ?Em Up, Knock ?Em Down, NEXT!?

Posted on April 22, 2009
Here. Embarrassed to say I was unaware of Cat Calendar Tolerance Level theory until reading the linked post. No Tags

One Snarky Book Review

Posted on April 22, 2009
Very mean but also funny, especially if you are familiar with the Picoult oeuvre. No Tags

Take That, Google! Well, Not Really: World Digital Library Now Online Near You

Posted on April 21, 2009
Here’s a little public service message about the World Digital Library (seems to detect or default to English, but you can change the language). The WDL is free, offered in multilingual format, and offers these principal objectives: [T]o: * Promote international and intercultural understanding; * Expand the volume and variety [...

Fun With Slow Motion

Posted on April 20, 2009
No Tags

?He?s not only been used by politicians like the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, to promote their own agendas, but he?s also been employed by merchants to sell air fresheners in Peru, snowboards in Switzerland and wine in Italy.?

Posted on April 20, 2009
He is Che Guevera, and this NYT book review further notes: …The supermodel Gisele Bündchen pranced [ed: "Pranced?" Blarg...] down a runway in a Che bikini. A men?s wear company brought out a Che action figure, complete with fatigues, a beret, a gun and a cigar...

A Note on Leadership

Posted on April 20, 2009
Occasionally I come across a quotation that just resonates. Here’s an example, from the Department of “I’ll Have What He’s Having.” Q. What is the most important lesson you?ve learned about leadership through the years? A...

Disturbing Strokes

Posted on April 19, 2009
A creepy remix of the opening sequence of a sitcom from years gone by. Feel free to integrate the totemic phrase “What chu talkin’ ’bout Willis?” into any reactions this provokes in you. No Tags

It?s A Funeral; Time To Sing

Posted on April 19, 2009
Although much has been written about the importance of sharing culture and the way information flow helps connect people, concrete examples aid in illustrating the point. Infamous stories about ?Happy Birthday? serve that role well but now we have a possible new arena from which to ask ?Did they really need to go after that [...

Useful Models

Posted on April 18, 2009
From the Lone Gunman, quoting The Truth About Markets/Culture and Prosperity (UK/US title respectively), a”two-paragraph excerpt from a section discussing ‘large models purportedly descriptive of entire economic systems’ (pp. 193-194)”: The error of principle?the reason these models will never be useful?is best exposed by Jorge Luis Borges? story of mapmakers who competed to build the best possible [...

A Small Piece of Land, Surrounded by Legislation

Posted on April 17, 2009
The post title is an oft-quoted phrase describing a croft, which I encountered for the first time in David Owen’s piece on a remote and ancient golf course in Scotland, “The Ghost Course,” which appears in this week’s The New Yorker...

How to Stop Piracy

Posted on April 17, 2009
Much as Anderson Cooper once quipped that the surest way to find Osama Bin Laden would be put the Yale alumni association on his tail (”If Osama bin Laden was a Yale graduate they would know what cave he was in, exactly.”), surely the most effective way to put an end to piracy on the [...

10 Things Some Blogger Hates About NPR

Posted on April 17, 2009
Curmudgeonly but funny and kinda true. No Tags

Doppelgängers

Posted on April 17, 2009
My name is just common enough that I hear about “me” doing some really interesting things, like singing with Derek Trucks (well, he spells his name differently, but it sounds the same).  Today, however, was a first.  The mail brought me reprints sent by a scholar at a different law school, acknowledging that my work has [...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.