Intellectual Property Law

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Posted on October 13, 2008
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The Brokers With Hands On Their Faces Blog

Posted on October 13, 2008
Here. Free samples below! No Tags

Madisonian Theory Has A Jingle!

Posted on October 13, 2008
Here, via the rather annoying Jingle Generator. (If it freezes try this link). No Tags

Christopher Sprigman and Siva Vaidhyanathan, ?Cue ?Barracuda??

Posted on October 13, 2008
Chris and Siva’s terrific Op-Ed ran is today’s Washington Post. Here are the opening paragraphs: After vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin finished her big speech at the Republican National Convention, the 1977 song “Barracuda,” by the band Heart, blared out over the roar of the crowd...

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Doctorow?s Discontent with Content

Posted on October 13, 2008

Mixtape!

Posted on October 11, 2008
Here. No Tags

Private Governance in Pittsburgh

Posted on October 11, 2008
The world of governance is never divided neatly into public and private.  This post has nothing to do with technology (though there is a property angle).  Instead it illustrates that the perils and pitfalls of uncritically accepting the authority of apparently autonomous self-governing communities — something that science and technology scholars are acutely aware of when it [...

R.I.P., Muxtape: A Tragic Tale of Transaction Costs

Posted on October 09, 2008
A few months ago I wrote about the wonderful site Muxtape here. It was not long for this world. I’ll append below a summary of its story from its founder, Justin Ouellette; to whet your interest, here’s an interesting paragraph on fair use indeterminacy: I talked to a lot of very smart lawyers [...

I Found Something Worse Than Jellied Bouillon With Frankfurters.

Posted on October 08, 2008
Way worse. Here. But don’t click that link unless you are prepared for the worst prepackaged food idea ever. Someone needs to inform Steve. No Tags

Using Social Tools to Rob Banks

Posted on October 08, 2008

Why This Profession Is Great a.k.a. Thank You Tulane and WIP IP

Posted on October 08, 2008
I just returned from the Works In Progress Intellectual Property Conference at Tulane. It was excellent. The IP crowd never fails to satisfy across a range of metrics from panel comments to individual feedback to dinner conversation about scifi, fantasy, film, and more...

A Catch-Up Post: New Models

Posted on October 07, 2008
Some things that have caught my eye recently: Ford is introducing technology that allows controls on automobile behavior to be designed into the key.  “Ensuring Junior Goes for a Mild Ride” in the NYTimes: Like V-chips that restrict what children can view on television, MyKey allows parents to limit teenage drivers to a top speed of 80 [...

Palin Syrah

Posted on October 07, 2008
It’s an organic wine from Chile that liberal winos are avoiding. No Tags

Some Recipes Should Remain Trade Secrets

Posted on October 07, 2008
After reading Frank’s post immediately below I began searching the Internets for comparison photos, pitting what’s on the box against what’s in the box. Here’s one example of what I found (here): I also encountered some recipes that should remains trade secrets...

False Advertisements of the Self

Posted on October 06, 2008
I just heard about a Jezebel post on Redbook’s photoshopped transformation of Faith Hill. The blogger called the retouching one more example of the “‘cover lie’ of a medium that has made its mark by invalidating women’s strengths, hopes and dreams with an endless parade of stories on how to be thinner, sexier, [and] [...

Tempest Fugit, and it fugits fast.

Posted on October 03, 2008
Well over a decade ago this website was extremely popular with the small children in my life. Now it takes mash ups like this to entertain them, and even then they pretend they are watching only to humor me. Happy friday! No Tags

For just $125 this inflatable crime scene can be yours!

Posted on October 01, 2008
Here. Suitable for, well, not really anything I can think of, but Walmart is marketing it as a Halloween product. And maybe criminal law clinics could use it for simulations the rest of the year. Potential accessories include “Stabbo the Clown” for $58 perfectly good dollars that you could otherwise use to buy a whole [...

Ann Bartow to Join madisonian.net

Posted on October 01, 2008
On behalf of the existing madisonian.net crew, I am delighted to note that Ann Bartow, my longtime friend and IP colleague who teaches at the University of South Carolina School of Law, is bringing her inimitable IP blogging to madisonian.net.  As many remember, for a long time Ann blogged on IP and information law at Sivacracy...

EndNote v. Zotero

Posted on September 28, 2008
Via Michael Froomkin and James Grimmelmann, I learn of the lawsuit filed by Thomson/Reuters, proprietors of the closed-source EndNote software used by scholars to manage sources, against George Mason University, home of Prof. Dan Cohen, leader of the project to develop Zotero, an open source Firefox plugin that competes against EndNote...

Jammie Thomas Granted New Trial

Posted on September 25, 2008
In a recently issued opinion, Judge Davis has granted Jammie Thomas a new trial, overturning an earlier verdict holding her liable in the amount of $222,000 for file sharing music over a peer-to-peer network. The specific legal ground for the ruling was an erroneous jury instruction that merely offering a work on a peer-to-peer [...

McCain Potatoes

Posted on September 24, 2008
Take a look at this screenshot from the Campaign HQ for McCain Potatoes: Political parody?  No — it’s a real promotional campaign for the french fries and other potato products offered by a real company called McCain, which is trying to capitalize on an unbelievably opportune moment in the company’s history...

Nancy Maynard Hicks

Posted on September 23, 2008
The New York Times carried an obituary today for Nancy Maynard Hicks, making clear that she lived an extraordinary life.  As the Times wrote, she was the first black woman to be a reporter at The New York Times and with her husband (the late Robert Maynard) bought and published The Oakland Tribune, still the [...

Fruit-Wrap, or Contracts Jump the Shark

Posted on September 18, 2008
Via boingboing, grapes with an End User License Agreement: The recipient of the produce contained in this package agrees not to propagate or reproduce any portion of the produce, including (but not limited to) seeds, stems, tissue and fruit. To paraphrase Johnny Mac:  They cannot be serious! But I suspect that they are...

New Papers on the Commons

Posted on September 17, 2008
I have a hand in two new papers recently posted to SSRN dealing with “cultural commons.”  The first is a paper that describes and defends a method for conducting further research, in this case a framework for investigating the mechanics of cultural or knowledge commons via case studies...

Anathem Arrives

Posted on September 17, 2008
Neal Stephenson’s newest novel, Anathem, was published the other day.  I’m a huge Stephenson fan.  I made it all the way through The Baroque Cycle; Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite reads of the last 10 years; Snow Crash and The Diamond Age have long had honored places on my bookshelf; I even cited In [...

Dark Side of the Moon: Richard Wright Died

Posted on September 15, 2008
To those who know Pink Floyd’s work the news that Richard Wright died is a bit of a blow. The band is one of my all-time favorites. Dark Side of the Moon is brilliant. Wright composed Us and Them (still pertinent in a world of anger politics) and the Great Gig in the Sky on [...

Student Note Idea: Segways in the Park

Posted on September 12, 2008
I find the topic of technology-specific rules fascinating & I have really learned a lot about law and rules from reading Fred Schauer’s work.  He has a recent paper on SSRN about the famous example of a rule prohibiting “vehicles in the park...

The Google Imaginary

Posted on September 11, 2008
As the DOJ lawyers up for a potential fight with Google (possibly the last entity they consider themselves capable of suing), we’re going to be hearing a lot about “competition on the internet” in coming months. As I’ve said before, I think that’s a will-o-the-wisp, an ignis fatuus that does more to distract us [...

Derivative of a Derivative

Posted on September 10, 2008
From this morning’s New York Times: A lawsuit claims that Steven Spielberg, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures copied a short story that was the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock movie ?Rear Window? when they made the thriller ?Disturbia,? Reuters reported...

KFC, Trade Secrets, and Conspiracy

Posted on September 09, 2008
Trade secrets play an important and growing role in American business. Legends about Coca-Cola?s secret formula and the protection of it include the claim that only two people know half of it at one time which Snopes says is false. Instead the two people know the entire formula...

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