Intellectual Property Law

Google Book Search Deal: Will the Prices be All Right?

Posted on October 31, 2008
Having suggested some conditions for the coming digital library of Alexandria, I should have commented on this Google deal earlier. But I’ve been way too busy to read the details in the proposed settlement. No one can doubt its importance–as Mike has said, we may be “seeing the early stages of the beginning [...

IP Pedagogy

Posted on October 30, 2008
Over at Conglomerate, Shubha Ghosh is posting on what he calls IP 3.0, or the turn toward transactional analysis and teaching in intellectual property law. Shubha is right that teaching and studying IP in a transactional context is one of the great unexplored frontiers of IP...

On Google Book Search

Posted on October 30, 2008
A blog on intellectual property law carries a burden of commenting on compelling IP policy issues of the day, and the pending settlement of the copyright infringement lawsuit over Google Book Search is about as compelling as it gets.  I’ve read only a smattering of blog commentary on the proposal, but Neil Netanel at Balkinization [...

In which I lower the tone of the blog for a cheap, tawdry and only tangentially trademark law related laugh.

Posted on October 30, 2008
Auto-tarnishment? Via. No Tags

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A Gallery of Harry Potter Related License Plates

Posted on October 30, 2008
If J.K. Rowling sues over these, I’m inclined to offer pro bono representation! Many more here. No Tags

Academic Entrepreneurship

Posted on October 29, 2008
From different corners comes new of IP law professors as entrepreneurs of different sorts, trying to impact the world of IP, creativity, and innovation in ways that are non-traditional (for law professors, at least): Prof. Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown) is helping to organize the “Organization for Transformative Works...

More on EndNote and Zotero

Posted on October 29, 2008
Via the Digital Humanities blog, I learn that George Mason University has released a statement strongly defending the Zotero project, which is under attack by Thomson Reuters, proprietor of EndNote.  My earlier post on the EndNote/Zotero lawsuit is here...

I Guess This Is Supposed To Be Reassuring?

Posted on October 28, 2008
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Hah!

Posted on October 27, 2008
Via. No Tags

From the Department of Nothing New Under the Sun

Posted on October 27, 2008
I like this Melissa Etheridge song a lot: But, I can’t help noticing that it owes a little bit of its melody to this song, bizarrely enough. Listen closely to Etheridge’s guitar riff about 1:16 in for the clearest example. No Tags

Trademark Parodies We Can Believe In

Posted on October 26, 2008
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Computer accessory: Halloween Handrest.

Posted on October 26, 2008
From the manufacturer: … we manufactured these disembodied hands from soft foam to look like the real thing. These hands do double-duty as wrist-rests, so they don’t just take up space on your desk, but are actually useful! Features Soft foam wristrest Shaped like a bloody disembodied hand! Perfect for Halloween as a prop, [...

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Posted on October 23, 2008
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Default to De-friending?

Posted on October 23, 2008
Scott Brown has decried friend congestion on Facebook, and proposes a (sun)setting to do something about it: [M]aybe [this is] the answer: A Facebook app we’ll call the Fade Utility. Untended Friends would gradually display a sepia cast on the picture, a blurring of the neglected profile?perhaps a coffee stain might appear on it or [...

?Sarkozy sues over voodoo doll?

Posted on October 23, 2008
From here: French President Nicolas Sarkozy is suing a company that sells voodoo dolls in his image along with pins to stick in them and a satirical biography, court officials said Thursday. The same company also sells a similar kit with a doll resembling Socialist standard-bearer Segolene Royal, whom Sarkozy beat in last year’s presidential [...

The End of the Wire Service Commons?

Posted on October 23, 2008
For some time, Brett Frischmann, Kathy Strandburg and I have been working on a framework for studying what we call cultural commons:  collaborative institutions that structure the production, distribution, and storage of knowledge.  (Here is the first paper of what we hope will be a long series...

The Meaning of Lawyering

Posted on October 23, 2008
Legal scholars spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to understand the content of the law.  They usually spend less time trying to understand the behavior of lawyers in regard to the law.  One categorical exception is the group of scholars who think and write about legal ethics...

World?s Most Tattooed Law Student?

Posted on October 22, 2008
Eak the Geek a.k.a Eduardo Arrocha is a first year student at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Story here. Of course IP oriented legal scholars know that Tattoo Law is a burgeoning field. See also. No Tags

Now That Is Open Source

Posted on October 21, 2008
According to AP, some professors are about to post medical records and “the DNA sequence of about one-fifth of their genes on the Web.” The goal is stimulate the ability to have less expensive and easier ways to have personal genome sequencing...

Genius, Not Genius; Right and Wrong

Posted on October 20, 2008
Some things that seem to relate to one another, though I haven’t figured out exactly how: Malcolm Gladwell popularizes Daniel Galenson’s research on creativity, ?Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity.?  Gladwell on Galenson: Prodigies like Picasso, Galenson argues, rarely engage in that kind of open-ended exploration...

Politics, Science, Vocation, and Purpose

Posted on October 20, 2008
There is a fascinating interview with Steven Shapin, author of The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation, at the U. Chicago Press website. Shapin questions the distinctiveness of academic and business modes of inquiry: If we . ...

Who Owns Your Neighborhood?

Posted on October 19, 2008
This week’s sign of the IP apocalypse: A mathematician who pioneered a fractal-based urban-mapping technique is embroiled in a copyright battle that raises legal questions about whether a company can claim ownership of the definition of neighborhoods: their specific locations and boundaries...

Siebren Versteeg?s Infinite Touchscreen

Posted on October 18, 2008
I had a good afternoon of gallery-hopping today, checking out some of Casey Ruble’s fantastic series “Except in Struggle” and Simon Nicholas’s eerie crowds. For IP and computer experts, Siebren Versteeg’s work raises a number of fascinating questions...

Target Women: Disney Princesses

Posted on October 18, 2008
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But These Go to 11

Posted on October 17, 2008
I will be watching the team at MoneyLaw to see what they make of this story.  The high school football coaches at Piedmont High School in Piedmont, California are exploiting what some characterize as a “loophole” in the rules governing the sport...

?Watching the Growth of Walmart Across America?

Posted on October 17, 2008
Via Flowing Data. I’m sure any similarity between that map and visual tools developed by the Centers for Disease Control to track lethal epidemics is entirely coincidental. No Tags

Little Trademark Suit On The Prairie

Posted on October 16, 2008
The Chicago Tribune reports: There’s a little lawsuit on the West Coast involving the non-profit Little House on the Prairie museum that sits on the Kansas homestead where author Laura Ingalls Wilder briefly lived and now owned by Chicago journalist Bill Kurtis and his sister...

You did WHAT for a Klondike Bar?

Posted on October 16, 2008
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Testicular Cancer Awareness

Posted on October 14, 2008
Found the above in the comments thread here. Many feminists, myself included, are pretty fed up with the way companies commodify “breast cancer awareness” by adding pink to their products and radiating a faux spirit of sisterhood to ratchet up their sales...

Perfect Albums

Posted on October 13, 2008
Album, the word may evoke a creaky, leather-vinyl, cardboard tome with faded Polaroids, instamatics, and school portraits. It may remind one of a black gold-based vinyl disc spinning at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. It does not always remind one of a smaller, shiny disc full of digits unleashed by a laser...

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