Intellectual Property Law

Exit, Stage Left . . .

Posted on November 24, 2008
Left over from the weekend’s reading is this fascinating account of the emerging conflict between playwrights and their not-for-profit producers.  Playwrights, like other artists, struggle to find venues to distribute their work.  Nonprofit theaters, struggling to find revenue, require that the authors of the plays that they produce commit to pay a continuing royalty based on [...

IP and Camo

Posted on November 24, 2008
A reservist friend alerted me to this story, which puts questions of IP rights for fashion design in a different light:  One of the stranger questions to emerge after the August conflict between Russia and Georgia: Did Russians go to war in camouflage filched from Finland? Officials were trying to determine whether the Finnish M/05 camouflage, top, [...

The lines between political and commercial speech get a bit murkier.

Posted on November 22, 2008
Before the election was even held, Barack Obama was named Advertising Age’s Marketer of the Year for 2008, beating out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com and other strong coprorate competitors, as well as John  McCain, to be lauded as the nation’s top brand builder...

Is broadband Internet access in the US ?robustly competitive??

Posted on November 21, 2008
Rob Frieden has posted an interesting and provocative paper, Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics: Developing a Clearer Assessment of Market Penetration and Broadband Competition in the United States. It is well worth a read and is bound to spark a debate...

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Senior Adult Choir Hip Hop - Odd But Strangely Compelling

Posted on November 19, 2008
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I Tried the Prius and Didn?t Like It

Posted on November 19, 2008
It’s not often that 21st century gets in my face.  Computers and computer networks blend seamlessly into work and home and social life; since my first encounters with online games 35 years ago, my reaction has usually been one of degree rather than kind...

Commons in the News

Posted on November 19, 2008
Last Sunday’s New York Times included a provocative piece about commons environments that should interest all intellectual property lawyers, scholars, and policymakers. No, I’m not talking about the lengthy and fascinating profile of Lewis Hyde, which intellectual property lawyers, scholars and policymakers should read, too...

Something Completely Different

Posted on November 18, 2008
This is technology, law, and society only in the most indirect way, but I can’t resist acknowledging the most recent symposium produced by the Yale Law Journal’s Pocket Part, on Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs).  We will all be hearing a lot more about SWFs and their US-based regulatory correspondent, CFIUS (the Committee on Foreign Investment [...

On the Origins of the Norwegian Blue

Posted on November 18, 2008
In college I took a course on the ancient origins of modern comedy.  Plautus and his antecedents and all that.  Comes now news that one of most brilliant and apparently original modern comic bits — Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch — likewise is grounded in the work of the ancients...

Obama?s FCC Transition team

Posted on November 18, 2008
Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach will head the Federal Communications Commission transition team. No Tags

The Black Hole

Posted on November 16, 2008
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Victoria?s Secret Trademark Settlement

Posted on November 14, 2008
From New York magazine: Phat Fashions sued Victoria’s Secret in March because the logo for its Pink line closely resembled the Phat Fashions logo, but the case was recently settled. On Wednesday a judge dismissed the suit after both parties reached a mutual agreement...

Does Online Search Behavior Tell Us Anything About Depression?

Posted on November 14, 2008
This Time article asserts it does. Below is an excerpt: … In the digital age we’re likely to turn to search engines just as often as we would confide in friends and medical professionals to gauge our psychological state. If we think we’re suffering from a real bout of the blues or a mental crisis, we’re [...

The Merging of Politics and Social Networks

Posted on November 12, 2008
To add to Deven’s post below about Obama and technology it was recently reported here that Obama spent $8 million on online advertising: Google remains the clear winner of Obama’s Web spoils, though the search giant’s payments for October have yet to appear in the campaign’s Federal Election Commission filings...

ABC 3D by Marion Bataille

Posted on November 12, 2008
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Spam gets 1 response per 12,500,000 emails

Posted on November 12, 2008
Tech Radar reports: A new study details how spammers ? the bane of our email inboxes ? still make pots of money, despite only receiving a response to one in every 12,500,000 emails they spam out. The study, by a team of seven computer scientists from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) infiltrated the [...

Steal This Comic

Posted on November 12, 2008
Via. No Tags

Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

Posted on November 11, 2008
Another Best Practices in Fair Use report has been released.  This time, the focus is media literacy education and educators.  The report and recommendations are online at www.centerforsocialmedia.org/medialiteracy. From the introduction: This document is a code of best practices that helps educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use...

Obama and Technology

Posted on November 10, 2008
As many of you know, President-elect Obama plans on having a Chief Technology Officer position in his administration. Many moons ago I tried to track down the tech policies of the various candidates. At that time only Ron Paul had one (yes it really was that early in the campaign)...

Ordinary Stick Voted Into Toy Hall of Fame

Posted on November 09, 2008
Not a joke. Here is an excerpt from an account by the AP: … The lowly stick, a universal plaything powered by a child’s imagination, landed in the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday along with the Baby Doll and the skateboard. The three were chosen to join the Strong National Museum of Play’s lineup of [...

Attorney Tries To Patent Form Of Patent Trolling

Posted on November 09, 2008
Via Patently-O: In 2007, Haliburton filed for patent protection ? claiming a method of “patent acquisition and assertion by a (non-inventor) first party against a second party.” It looks like the company wants to be able to sue non-inventing entities who try to patent and assert technology against a company who has been using the technology [...

Money-Laundering Manual

Posted on November 09, 2008
From the Memory Hole: The Memory hole has obtained and scanned ?Investigation and Prosecution of Illegal Money Laundering: A Guide to the Bank Secrecy Act.? Originally written and published in 1983 by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, this is the apparently identical version published by the IRS for its staff...

Dali, Film, and Exclusivity

Posted on November 07, 2008
Apparently there are now three, yes three, Dali biopics in the works. One has Al Pacino which is likely to be ridiculous. But the other has Antonio Banderas which seems just as absurd. These two films are about the end of Dali’s life. The third is about his youth...

HEY! YOU! VOTE!

Posted on November 04, 2008
See this image? It is a true screen capture of the page for the United States. Yesterday morning while John Scalzi and I were chatting, a question came up about the United States. He went to Wikipedia and this was the page. By the time I went to it, it had been changed back to [...

Google Book Search and the Future of the Cloud

Posted on November 03, 2008
Take a look at this recent post by Nicholas Carr, and then read the first comment (by Tom Lord).  They are talking about “network strategies” (cf. “network effects”) and the future of online businesses, with an eye over the shoulder (Nick’s earlier post) on the here-sooner-than-we-realize “cloud” computing platforms from Google, Microsoft, and others...

Kevin Collins on In re Bilski

Posted on November 02, 2008
Kevin Collins has a post at Patently-O about the In re Bilski ruling. His thoughts focus on “the criteria that the court offers to draw the line between patentable and unpatentable transformations.” I recommend reading the post but here are some questions he addresses just to entice you: First, the move raises a normative question: Why [...

Deja Vu All Over Again: Detroit Blues

Posted on November 01, 2008
As many know Detroit is in the news. A recent L.A. Times story asks ?Are the Big Three worth saving?? Now I hate the Pistons and have never been to Detroit, but that does not mean I think the auto industry should implode. Yet, with $25 billion in loan guarantees in place and new [...

Demotivation

Posted on November 01, 2008
Via. No Tags

David Foster Wallace On Failure.

Posted on November 01, 2008
This clip from an interview in Italy will make you miss him more. No Tags

Today?s Secret Word: Porno

Posted on October 31, 2008
Yes the favorite oddity of American culture is back and just in time for Halloween. We don’t mind ultra-violent films but say porno or show some nudity and it’s time to ban a film. First, note that part of the ad campaign for Zack and Miri Make a Porno have dropped the “Make a Porno” [...

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