Intellectual Property Law

Hilarious Muppets Bloopers!

Posted on April 15, 2009
Sorry, couldn’t resist. No Tags

Down with Strunk & White

Posted on April 14, 2009
Geoff Pullum, linguist and (among other things) contributor to the magnificent Language Log,  has a sharp critique of Strunk & White at the Chronicle of Higher Education, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the publication of their little book: It’s sad...

Has It Come to This?

Posted on April 13, 2009
Today’s sign that the Internet apocalypse is upon us: The New York Times crossword puzzle includes the phrase “Rickrolling” as the answer to a clue (37 Across: “Widespread Internet prank involving a bait-and-switch link to a music video”)...

Not hungry, thanks.

Posted on April 12, 2009
No Tags

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

Innovation, Entrepreneurs, and Small Business

Posted on April 12, 2009

Via. No Tags

Posted on April 12, 2009
Via. No Tags

In the words of Monty Python, ?I want to sing!?

Posted on April 12, 2009
This one just made me smile (and maybe sing). It is fun, and although I associate the music with Christmas, it works for Easter too. Now you may notice that it is staged. Which I suppose means that the media company behind the event has taken its cue from flashmobs...

The Revenge of the Romantic Author

Posted on April 09, 2009
Critics of the “romantic author” critique of copyright law are back.  As the Dan Hicks song goes, how can I miss the romantic author if she won’t go away? Three new IP papers on “originality” in copyright law have been posted recently on SSRN, two of which emphasize the idea that copyright law should do more [...

UGC 3.0 at Columbia

Posted on April 09, 2009
I’ll be talking next Friday at a conference at Columbia on the effects of User-Generated Content.  Here’s the overview: The rapid increase of user-generated content on the Internet is a source of concern for traditional media firms. Will the YouTubes, Facebooks, Flickrs, Second Lifes and the HuffPos take away significant audience segments on a sustaining basis? [...

Bill Patry Has A New Book Coming Out: ?Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars?

Posted on April 08, 2009
From the publisher’s website: Metaphors, moral panics, folk devils, Jack Valenti, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Kenyes, predictable irrationality, and free market fundamentalism are a few of the topics covered in this lively, unflinching examination of the Copyright Wars: the pitched battles over new technology, business models, and most of all, consumers...

?Downturn Puts New Stresses on Libraries?

Posted on April 07, 2009
That’s the title of this NYT article, which reports in part: These days, however, community need reaches far beyond reference help ? and in many libraries, it is turning a normally tranquil place into an emotional and stressful hotbed. As the national economic crisis has deepened and social services have become casualties of budget cuts, libraries have [...

Works in Progress Conferences for IP Scholars

Posted on April 07, 2009
Two leading “works in progress” conferences for IP scholarship have posted calls for papers. The Intellectual Property Scholars Conference (IPSC)  moves back to Cardozo Law School this year.  The conference is scheduled for August 6 and 7...

We Know Where Waldo Is!

Posted on April 06, 2009
[O]n April 2nd, 2009, the Rutgers University Programming Association (RUPA) and Rutgers Student Life broke the Guinness World Record for The World?s Largest Gathering of People Dressed as Waldo from the iconic picture book series, Where?s Waldo?. 1,052 Rutgers students, staff and community members were spotted ?showing their stripes? at the historic State Theatre located [...

Recruiting Violations and the Integrity of March Madness

Posted on April 06, 2009
The University of Connecticut men?s basketball team will not be playing in the championship game tonight, but recent turmoil surrounding the program raises important questions about the direction and credibility of college sports. One need not be a cynic to wonder, indeed suspect, that serious cheating has become the norm in big-money college sports...

Paid Placement = Trademark Use

Posted on April 03, 2009
So the Rescuecom.com case was just decided.  I will have to parse it carefully, but my initial impression is that it brings the Second Circuit into harmony with the other federal circuits.  As I argued in my Google’s Law article, I think this is the right result on the doctrinal issue of trademark use (I [...

Julia Angwin on Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America

Posted on April 02, 2009

This makes the Dark Side looks kind of fun.

Posted on April 02, 2009
(Fast forward about 40 second if you want to skip the legalese.) No Tags

Star Trek Character or Erectile Dysfunction Pill?

Posted on April 02, 2009
Take the quiz here. No Tags

New Paper on SSRN on Law and Knowledge

Posted on April 02, 2009
I’ve posted a new paper to SSRN titled “Notes on a Geography of Knowledge.”  (Download it here.)  The paper is part of a forthcoming symposium being published by the Fordham Law Review, organized by Kathy Strandburg, Jay Kesan, and Brett Frischmann and titled, “When Worlds Collide: Intellectual Property at the Interface Between Systems of Knowledge [...

William Zinsser, Writing Well, and Fair Use

Posted on April 02, 2009
Virtually every law professor who works with student law review editors has horror stories about students’ mindless affection for the Bluebook, for alleged “rules” of grammar, syntax, and writing style, and (my own favorite) for the journal’s “policy” regarding something or other...

WIPIP 2009 Scheduled

Posted on April 02, 2009
The following arrived in my In box yesterday: Seton Hall University School of Law and the Gibbons Institute of Law, Science and Technology at the Law School are pleased to host the 7th Annual Works in Progress Intellectual Property (WIPIP) conference on Friday and Saturday, October 2-3, 2009...

Google to Take Over Federal Court System?

Posted on April 01, 2009
A friend of mine at Google passed along a copy of an internal email today.  My friend asked me to keep it confidential, but the news is too unnerving — and huge — to keep quiet. Here’s the relevant text: To: [names redacted] From: [names redacted] Re: Google Law Project Date: April 1, 2009 I’d like the working group to [...

TOTM Blog Symposium on Mike Carrier?s book, Innovation for the 21st Century

Posted on April 01, 2009
Check out the blog symposium at Truth on the Market on Professor Michael Carrier?s (Rutgers) forthcoming book: Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law. Comments welcome! I’ll link to the posts below the fold: Here are the posts so far: Dan Crane Phil Weiser Geoff Manne Josh Wright Dennis [...

Pro Bono Copyright Infringement Case From Hell

Posted on March 30, 2009
No Tags

That Was Irving R. Levine

Posted on March 28, 2009
I arrived at college the same year that ABC launched Nightline (originally: the late, great Frank Reynolds hosting “America Held Hostage”), and Ted Koppel’s face graced my dorm room almost every night for four years. I learned to love TV news in high school, however, and that’s because I was a huge fan of Irving [...

Google Classic

Posted on March 27, 2009
Via. No Tags

??DNA bungle? haunts German police?

Posted on March 27, 2009
Six murders were linked by DNA that probably had nothing to do with the killer(s). From the BBC: Police in Germany have admitted that a woman they have been hunting for more than 15 years may never have existed. Dubbed the “phantom of Heilbronn”, the woman was described by police as the country’s most dangerous woman...

The History of Newspapers and Copyright Standards

Posted on March 26, 2009
In an earlier post I suggested that the contemporary intersections of newspapers and technology could be contrasted in interesting ways with the last ten years’ worth of intersections of recording companies, motion picture studios, and software companies and technology...

Schlag and Me

Posted on March 25, 2009
About three years ago, I wrote a short essay on law reviews and open access publishing that characterized legal scholarship in student-edited journals in glib and uncharitable terms: “The theory of the economy of prestige holds that we see a grumpily mutually-reinforcing symbolic economy of law professors, lawyers, law students, law schools and their universities [...

Life Imitating Art, I

Posted on March 25, 2009
“Here, there be dragons” has long served as a metaphor for the unknown. An unfortunate Indonesian fisherman recently discovered that sometimes, there really are dragons. Slaying Komodo dragons may be a bad idea, but slaying their metaphorical brethren is a different matter...

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