As Mike Madison has noted almost two years ago, in general innovations in law school curriculum have not kept pace with business schools. That may be changing. Washington & Lee has made a splash by changing its curriculum to an experiential model. Irvine says it will embrace it. Vanderbilt, not to mention Harvard, […]

[Read more →]

Just over a year ago I pointed to a lawsuit brought by Bob Yari, producer of the 2006 Best Picture Oscar winner Crash, against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the Producers Guild of America.  AMPAS writes the rules for the Academy Awards, and in 2005, before the competition that resulted […]

[Read more →]

The annual USNews ranking of law schools (indeed, of graduate programs generally) became broad blogospheric knowledge yesterday, thanks to “leaked” announcements (see here and here).  The magazine is supposed to be released tomorrow — Friday.
I put “leaked” in quotation marks because the first link above points to images of the law school report snapped from […]

[Read more →]

Jessica Litman came to Pitt last week to deliver our annual “Distinguished Intellectual Property Lecture,” and she argued from the following premise:  Not only are the stars are aligned such that comprehensive copyright reform may be possible — roughly equivalent to what we experienced during the 1960s and early 1970s — but that it is […]

[Read more →]

Jill Lepore has a very interesting and provocative essay in a recent New Yorker, teasing apart distinctions between fact and fantasy, between works of popular history and works of popular fiction.  Her thesis?  That the distinction may be gendered:
By the end of the eighteenth century, not just novel readers but most novel writers were women, […]

[Read more →]

New and upcoming things:
First:
The excellent IP team at American University’s Washington College of Law prompts me to remind everyone that the annual symposium titled “IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections” is just around the corner.  The symposium will take place on Friday, April 4, at the WCL campus, 4801 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington DC, Room 528, 10am-4pm.  […]

[Read more →]

Arstechnica has a story suggesting that Apple is negotiating to offer unlimited downloads to iPod owners who pay a set fee. The scheme essentially means raising the price of iPods, and “giving away” the music.
I speculate that this makes sense as the next development in how consumers spend their entertainment dollars. Each person […]

[Read more →]

Well, I admit to a looonnnggg period away from blogging, but I have an explanation (if not an excuse). My co-author Joe Liu and I have finished a new casebook on copyright that will be published by West in time for fall adoption. One thing I have learned for sure - the last […]

[Read more →]

Some may remember the actress Kristin Davis as the good girl from Sex and the City. Well good compared to the characters around her. The film based on the show is due to be released on May 30. And just in time pictures of someone naked and a sex video that are allegedly of Ms. […]

[Read more →]

As many who read this blog probably already know, Arthur C. Clarke died today at the age of 90. Given the length and breadth of his career other sources will have many views of his work. I personally recall his general displeasure at the millennium celebrations. Of course having writen a little thing called 2001: […]

[Read more →]

Having learned a great deal at Maryland’s conference on a similar topic, I am proud to announce that Seton Hall Law is hosting a symposium on pandemic flu this fall. Proposals are due by 4/15; here is the call for papers:
No Tags

[Read more →]

Law professors who teach intellectual property and information law subjects are, on the whole, a pretty lively, friendly, and social bunch, and our numbers are growing.  The market has a seemingly endless capacity to absorb new faculty, as law schools across the rankings spectrum hire first one, then a second, and increasingly a third IP specialist.
If my […]

[Read more →]

Law.com has a good summary of projects seeking to make opinions, statutes, and other legal materials free. The history of these efforts goes back to the early 90s, but the recent changes may the ones to threaten the big shots. According to the article Public Resource now offers “virtually all of the Federal Reporter second […]

[Read more →]

In the most recent issue of The Economist, I found an ad for the upcoming “General Counsel West Coast Roundtable.”  Kent Walker, Google’s GC, will give the keynote presentation.  According to the ad copy, he “argues that lawyers play a critical role in promoting innovation.  In the face of change, the lawyer’s role is not […]

[Read more →]

I’m currently writing a book about law and virtual worlds, and in the course of that I’ve been collecting what I hope is a comprehensive list of published law review articles and student notes that focus primarily on the intersection of law and virtual worlds.
The current version is attached below in case folks are interested. […]

[Read more →]

So the RIAA may be subject to a class action suit in Oregon. As the folks at Recording Industry v. The People note the 109 page complaint begins by invoking the RIAA’s statement that it sometimes catches dolphins when fishing. It is a bold way to show the possible callousness of the RIAA and MediaSentry […]

[Read more →]

According to a Stephen Carr review of Nicholas Carr’s new book comparing the economic impact of the rise of the electrical grid and the rise of the internet, it may well be:
[Carr] describes a world in which a handful of lucky and brilliant entrepreneurs uses the World Wide Computer to tap humanity’s smarts and creativity […]

[Read more →]

Dan Solove’s recent post about David Lat and Facebook and Bruce Boyden’s post about the possible destruction of Nabokov’s unpublished novel raise some questions. Who owns your emails, blog entries, FaceBook pages, and so on? What about when you die? Does your family get the material? What if you wanted it destroyed? What if one […]

[Read more →]

NC-17 is often the kiss of death. But there may be a way to fix that. Consider that DVDs often come packed with the extra footage that could not be shown (or could have been shown but only with an NC-17 rating). Why not see what the market wants? Release both versions of the film, […]

[Read more →]

That’s one creative title for an article in what looks to be a fascinating issue of First Monday. The issue offers a critical take on Web 2.0; here’s Michael Zimmer on its theme:
In Technopoly, Neil Postman warned that we tend to be “surrounded by the wondrous effects of machines and are encouraged to […]

[Read more →]