Carrie Furnace and the Oakmont Country Club. George Westinghouse and the Pittsburgh Opera. These things go in pairs – Pittsburgh’s industrial history and its contemporary arts and cultural resources. Having written about Pittsburgh for close to 15 years, I’ve learned about a lot of those pairings. What’s good for the bank account often turns out to be good for the spirit. The old Civic Arena (a/k/a Civic Auditorium), later the…
Read MoreTwo Cheers for Copyright
Some people are cheering and some people are shrugging in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last week in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands.[1] The Court held that designs for Varsity Brands’ cheerleading uniforms may be protected as copyrighted works against unauthorized copying by its upstart rival, Star Athletica. Cheering, because the decision appears to put wind in the sails of those who would like to see expanded IP…
Read MoreReading List: Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Law and entrepreneurship? Law and innovation? Read these three pieces in a single sitting: Startups and Unmet Legal Needs (Alice Armitage, Evan Frondorf, Christopher Williams, and Robin Feldman) Abstract: To foster innovation, we must find solutions to provide effective, affordable legal services on a large scale to early-stage companies from all backgrounds, while ensuring that companies have the opportunity to receive individualized and accurate advice. Otherwise, legal issues will continue…
Read MoreLegal Infrastructure
I am aggregating the posts from the recent online symposium at Prawfsblawg concerning two relatively new books: Gillian Hadfield’s Rules for a Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy and The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind. In different but related ways, both books are speaking to both global…
Read More#Pittsblog: Imagining Pittsburgh
Contemporary Pittsburgh is still mostly missing a writer who distills its emerging, collective voice, meaning a forward-looking imagineer to complement the marvelous visual nostalgia of Rick Sebak. The expressive identity of the city and region are probably the things that I’ve wrestled with the most since moving here and writing about the place myself, on and off, for close to 15 years. And when I come back to the topic from…
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