Posts Tagged ‘copyright’

Daily Roundup 2008-12-31

Due to work and family commitments today and tomorrow, this may be my final post at Overlawyered.  Walter Olson will be returning shortly.

  • Eight Los Angeles police officers may face suit from an unwilling Jamie Lynn Spears decoy. Why does the LAPD provide any officers at all to protect B-list celebrities?
  • What slippery slope? New Jersey Civil Rights Division finds discrimination in case of Methodist ministry which refused to rent a pavilion for civil union of two lesbians, but otherwise rented the pavilion for marriage without regard for sectarian concerns.  Perhaps this makes sense if sexual orientation is protected under New Jersey civil rights law, but I’m pretty sure New Jersey still gets it wrong on the First Amendment;
  • Revolutionary breathrough in cellular anti-aging, or journalistic malpractice?
  • “But the majority voted not to disbar since they saw a distinction between an attempt to have sex with the minor and actually doing it.”  Like Eric Turkewitz, I’m astonished;
  • In building a law firm, perhaps Craigslist is not the best substitute for traditional recruiting practices;
  • Great news for British authors of Popeye fan fiction.  American fans are still out of luck;
  • Talk show hosts whose entertainment relies on “zinging” stupid guests, with the support of an even more stupid audience, should never invite Christopher Hitchens to appear on their shows;
  • Thoughts on whether it’s deceptive, or just lame, to call a solo law practice “the Law Offices of John Smith” or “John Smith and Associates” from sole practitioner Scott Greenfield.

In the event that this is my final piece here, I’ve enjoyed my stint guest-blogging, and commend Walter on the hard work he’s done through the years to make this a great site, as well as to build an unusually good commenting audience.  Happy new year!

Microblog 2008-12-19

  • Newest “Trial Lawyers Inc.” report is on Louisiana [Manhattan Institute, Point of Law]
  • Mel Weiss disbarred automatically w/strong language from judges [Matter of Weiss h/t @erwiest]
  • Pro se claimant: I wrote down cure for cancer and then the darn hospital stole it! [Above the Law]
  • “California Supreme Court Ruling May Deter Good Samaritans” [The Recorder; SF Chronicle with copious reader comments, GruntDoc, our coverage last year]
  • Due diligence on dodgy funds? Sometimes it seems everyone’s relying on someone else to do that [Bronte Capital] Madoff fraud may date to 1970s, maybe “recent laxity” angle has been overdone [Securities Docket] “Ponzi crawl” = pub crawl whereby new person is added at each location and has to buy a round [Re Risk]
  • Radley Balko on Julie Amero malware-prosecution story [Reason, earlier]
  • Join Paul Ehrlich in some of the world’s most famously refuted predictions, and you too may get to be Obama’s science adviser [John Tierney/NYT, John Holdren]
  • Wisconsin Minnesota pig-sitter trial set for March, claim is that defendant let star porker overfeed and gain a hundred pounds [LaCrosse Tribune h/t @kevinokeefe]
  • More on the Patent and Trademark Office “acceptable error” employment case [Venture Chronicles, Jeff Nolan; earlier]
  • Procter & Gamble “Satanism” case finally settles, soap giant got $19 million verdict against four Amway distributors who spread rumor [OnPoint News]
  • Once filing of a suit severs the channels of communication, attorneys and clients alike begin to make up “what really happened” narratives [Settle It Now]
  • Sometimes lawyers need to be formal. Don’t IM “Court denied your appeal u will b executed saturday thx” [Beck & Herrmann]
  • Bangladesh hoping to build replica of Taj Mahal despite copyright claims [Times Online h/t @mglickman]
  • Midnight regulations? “OMB Watch” vigilant (and with reason) during this R-2-D transition but sang different tune in 2000’s D-2-R [Gillespie, Reason]

Troll trips up: SCO told to pay Novell $2.5 million

Bankrupt SCO Group Inc., much loathed for its (sometimes successful) efforts to extract copyright royalties from users of the open-source Linux system, has suffered another humiliating defeat in a Utah federal courtroom. The court proceedings determined, among other things, that SCO didn’t in fact own the copyrights it claimed to own, and had breached its fiduciary duty under an earlier agreement with Novell. (Ars Technica, Information Week, GrokLaw). At the height of SCO’s notoriety, the high-profile law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner was pursuing its anti-Linux claims on contingency. Earlier here, here, and here. [Update Sept. 18, 2009: in dramatic reversal, 10th Circuit, McConnell writing, reinstates SCO’s suit; Boies firm still representing SCO. See WSJ Law Blog, 8/25/09]

In other news, progress is being made on a scheme of “defense patent aggregation”; an outfit called the RPX Corp., with subscriptions from large technology-using companies, aims to buy up (presumably lower-value) patents to keep them out of the hands of trolls (WSJ Law Blog).

Microblog 2008-11-21

  • “Forensic Experts Aren’t Team Players. Nor Should They Be.” [Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”]
  • Australia high court reverses 2 crim convictions, judge snored loudly a lot (not just your innocent-error naplet) [Lowering the Bar]
  • Hear that V-3 hum: preview of 2012 post-bailout car from Congressional Motors [Iowahawk satire]
  • California Supreme Court gets a Prop 8 amicus brief from “Divine Queen of the Almighty Eternal Creator” [Box Turtle Bulletin]
  • Bristol, CT mulls ban on smoking on public streets [Connecticut Employment Law Blog]
  • “Singers Sue Label For Failing To Sue Others For Infringement” [TechDirt; Hall & Oates, Warner/Chappell; h/t @tamerabennett]
  • Lawyer must spend half her time deflecting jokes about her name [Sullivan & Cromwell]

October 29 roundup

MP3 takedowns, the pre-emptive way

Takedowns without DMCA takedown notices: a hosting company pulls down a user’s posted MP3 song files because the user, an indie record label, can’t produce a copyright registration certificate for them — and never mind that they’re the label’s own material posted with the okay of its artists. (Tamera Bennett, Oct. 20, Gordon Firemark, Oct. 21; via Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion).

Election-season YouTube takedowns

They seem now to be part of the accepted armament of campaign law. “Of course the McCain-Palin team could counter-notify, but the DMCA’s 10-14 business day waiting period makes that option next to useless, when ’10 days can be a lifetime in a political campaign.'” (Seltzer/Citizen Media Law, Levy/CL&P; but see Ron Coleman, Oct. 15: process need not be as slow as waiting period implies).

Related: Does trademark law allow candidates to suppress some types of opposition keyword advertising, as when candidates put up negative ads keyed to each others’ names? [Levy/CL&P]

October 14 roundup

  • Don’t miss Roger Parloff’s tour de force coverage in Fortune blowing whistle on that dodgy suit in Moscow against Bank of New York Mellon, adorned by participation of lawprofs Dershowitz and Blakey [PoL overview, main article]
  • Digital remixes and copyright law [Lessig, WSJ]
  • Surgeon at Connecticut’s Greenwich Hospital revealed as drug abuser, Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder now pressing suit on behalf of general class of patients, which sounds like it means “whether harmed or not” [Greenwich Time, Newsday via TortsProf weekly roundup]
  • Chicago sheriff halting foreclosures, or maybe not, reportage is confused [Reuters, big discussion at Steve Chapman blog] And is Obama taking the idea national with bid for 90-day moratorium on foreclosures? [AP]
  • Foie gras-style financial gavage? “None of banks getting government money was given a choice about it, said one of the people familiar with the plans.” [Bloomberg, Bernstein @ Volokh] More: Ann Althouse, Kuznicki/Cato at Liberty.
  • Trey Allen law firm in Dallas agrees to pay $840,000 restitution after profiting from staged car crash scheme, but Allen’s lawyer says client wasn’t aware of any fraud [ABA Journal]
  • Smoking bans, alcohol taxes contributing to steep decline of English village pubs [Newsweek]
  • Bias-law panel rules Wal-Mart within its rights not to hire a female applicant for Santa Claus position [eight years ago on Overlawyered]

Artist detained at border over sketch of SUV

From J-Walk Blog:

Keene Valley resident Jerilea Zempel was detained at the U.S. border this summer because she had a drawing of a sport-utility vehicle in her sketchbook.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers told Zempel they suspected her of copyright infringement.

She was released after more than an hour in custody at the Houlton, Maine, port of entry from New Brunswick, Canada.

Her release came only after she persuaded border guards she was an artist doing a project that involved a crocheted SUV as a statement against America’s dependence on oil and love for big vehicles.

(Lohr McKinstry, “Keene artist had hard time getting back into US”, Plattsburgh (N.Y.) Press-Republican, Oct. 4).

Annals of sweeping discovery: Dish Network vs. Coolsat

“In the war on piracy, consumer privacy is often the first casualty. But on Monday, a federal court imposed some limits on the collateral damage content owners can inflict, blocking a satellite TV provider’s effort to subpoena the names and personal information of thousands of people who purchased ‘free-to-air’ satellite receivers that can be hacked to decrypt signals meant for paid subscribers.” A brief from EFF had argued that “Echostar’s [parent company of Dish Network’s] subpoenas were ‘especially troubling in light of past litigation’ where another satellite TV provider, DirecTV, had similarly obtained customer information in the course of a civil suit against a device manufacturer. The company then sent out 170,000 letters pressuring customers to agree to a $3,500 ‘settlement’ or face litigation.” (Julian Sanchez, Ars Technica, Oct. 1). On the earlier DirecTV litigation campaign, see posts here, here, here, and (reader letter) here.