I don’t like to pick on journalists for not being perfect, but I’m constantly surprised at how reporters seem willing to give Google credit for the resources available on the Web. About two years ago, USA Today ran an article entitled “This the Google side of your brain” where the reporter suggested that Google […]

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As is often the case for IP news from Europe, the IPKat has the best coverage of recent news that Parmesan cheese comes from Parma.  More precisely, the European Court of Justice ruled that “Parmigiano Reggiano,” a protected designation of origin (PDO), covers the translation “Parmesan” for cheese, because the latter “constitutes an evocation of that PDO,” […]

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It’s a good thing that I have a couple of trips to New York City planned for later this Spring, because what looks like a can’t-miss exhibition has just opened at the Museum of Modern Art:  Design and the Elastic Mind.
Over the past twenty-five years, people have weathered dramatic changes in their experience of time, […]

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For better or for worse, ratings and rankings of U.S. law schools are here to stay.  Citation count studies of law professors are often held up as the best alternative to U.S. News rankings of law schools, but other “non-flaky” systems are out there.  Here are two. 
Inside Higher Ed today reports on plans at the Green […]

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Passionate followers of professional football know that the National Football League is just now concluding its annual “combine,” the camp where would-be draftees get timed, tested, and measured by pro scouts in anticipation of draft day.  There are speed tests, jumping tests, “position specific events,” measurements, and the famous or infamous Wonderlic intelligence test.  The […]

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Lest I get too carried away by the prospect of “Rep. Lessig,” I want to add my voice to the chorus of praise for an upcoming copyright conference that I have nothing to do with and cannot attend:
AHRC Primary Sources on Copyright History Project:
Conference – Wednesday 19th and Thursday 20th March 2008 – Stationers’ Hall, […]

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Stanford lawprof Larry Lessig is thinking of running for Congress.  Should he do it?  Is this the most effective way to leverage his anti-corruption message?
I believe that the last time a brilliant young Stanford law faculty member ran for Congress, he ended up serving several (non-sequential) terms.  Professor Tom Campbell eventually ran for the U.S. […]

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Some of you may have heard that tonight there will be total lunar eclipse. NASA has a nice page on tonight’s event. Of course east coast bias abounds and it begins with the details for EST experience (tip: partial eclipse starts at 8:43 pm EST and the full eclipse starts at 10:01 pm). But fear […]

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A friend in Pittsburgh sent me a link yesterday to this eBay auction of what’s being billed as the world’s greatest collection of recorded music.  I thought that it was too odd to be true, but the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and NPR have both run interviews with the collector, a man in Pine, a Pittsburgh suburb, who […]

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In the past year, there have been some interesting developments in trademark law and virtual worlds, including the Eros lawsuits in Second Life and increased attention from legal practitioners (e.g., see this from WIPO). So, when I was recently invited by the Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal to write about user-generated […]

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The idea that one should be a zealous advocate for my client may be good, but it can also lead to large sanctions. The image of the “I’ll do anything to win” lawyer may be exacerbated by media; yet many firms have that attitude without any need of media reinforcement. Two recent intellectual property cases […]

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The (virtual) law of nuisance and zoning may be entering into Second Life, according to Reuters. “Linden Lab has banned ‘ad farms,’ the small plots of land with gaudy advertisements that are designed to extort neighboring landowners.” I suppose this will be a new way that virtual “neighbors settle disputes“?
The Naked Cowboy is […]

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For the second time in three months, Harvard has moved aggressively to stake out a leadership position at the intersection of higher education, public policy, and distributive justice.  Whether or not you agree with the merits of Harvard’s positions, in some very specific ways it is interesting to watch Mother Harvard assert itself, both on […]

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According the Chronicle of Higher Education “Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy … that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online.” Faculty may ask for a waiver of the policy but the default will be that they provide an electronic copy to the […]

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There is a very interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal on hospitals’ efforts to assure that their patients understand the consent forms they are signing. Here is a description of the VA’s efforts:
The Department of Veteran’s Affairs, with 153 hospitals, has over the past several years adopted a new electronic informed-consent software […]

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There’s nothing like a juicy fair use lawsuit to get copyright lawyers all wound up.
Yesterday, the New York Times published this Joe Nocera column revisiting the Harry Potter/RDR Books/HP Lexicon lawsuit, fanning the embers of a debate that burned through the blogosphere last Fall and earlier this Spring.  Responding to Nocera, Derek Bambauer at Info/Law […]

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This week at the Chicago Faculty Blog, a mobblog of distinguished commentators has been kicking around Molly Van Houweling’s interesting recent article, The New Servitudes (Georgetown Law Journal, forthcoming, I believe).  (Here’s a link to the list of posts.)  The paper attempts to situate “new” servitudes — prospective rules that enable and disable uses of intangible things, […]

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Google Co-op is a “platform which enables you to use your expertise to help other users find information.” According to the FAQs, “When you subscribe to someone in the Google Co-op directory, all of that provider’s labels and subscribed links will be added to your Google search results for relevant searches. The labels and […]

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I saw a great concert by Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette at Newark’s NJPAC last night (which Jarrett called “one of the best halls–if not the best–in the US”). It was a really extraordinary performance, especially during one transcendent passage near the end where he was seamlessly interweaving some classical themes with […]

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