I was intrigued by this item in the NYT “Ideas” report last Sunday:
Wearing imitation designer clothing or accessories can fool others — but no matter how convincing the knockoff, you never, of course, fool yourself. It’s a small but undeniable act of duplicity. Which led a trio of researchers to suspect that wearing counterfeits might [...]

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Further to my recent post on the issue of the women jailed for recording a few minutes of the Twilight sequel, New Moon, it has been announced that the charges against her have been dropped and she has been released from custody.  A news story here contains interesting statements from both the producers of the [...]

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Justin Hughes, on the faculty at Cardozo Law School and currently leading the US delegation at WIPO in Geneva – the meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), which is focusing on exceptions and limitations – suggested that I post a note pointing to the US Statement on a new WIPO [...]

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From Charbucks to South Butt …
Recent Pitt grad and my former research assistant Dan Corbett is now a Pittsburgh trademark lawyer with his own blog – Pittsburgh Trademark Lawyer, and please send some traffic his way — and via Dan I learn that the North Face has gone ahead and sued the seller of “South [...]

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I picked this up via SSRN:
David W. Galenson, From ‘White Christmas’ to Sgt. Pepper: The Conceptual Revolution in Popular Music
The paper has nothing directly to do with intellectual property law, but its description of the evolution in popular music during the 20th century suggests some provocative hypotheses.  Here is one:  If, as the paper argues, [...]

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As the Wall Street Journal put it the other day,
Random House has sent a letter to literary agents claiming the digital rights to books it published before the emergence of a thriving electronic-book marketplace.
The New York Times also covered this story. The issue is ownership of rights to publish backlist titles as e-books, where the [...]

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Via Language Log I learned about the great “meep” ban of 2009 (a high school principal in Danvers, Mass. warned students there not to say  “meep” in school,  connecting the word with disruptive behavior), but via the Salem (Mass.) News I picked up some extra flavor:  The warning followed intimations that students were organizing their [...]

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Further to posting on how everyday Web 2.0 citizens relate to copyright law (and continuing my case study on Twilight-related IP issues), I have come across another example of where the popular understanding of digital legal rights is imperfect.  However, in this case, it looks like the copyright law – or something like it – [...]

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Penn Law Professor Ed Baker died on Tuesday, as has been noted here, here, here and here and here, so far. Every nice thing that has been written about him so far has been true, and there are many more things to add. He was a very unique and special person. He was brilliant, [...]

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If there is an intellectual property angle to the Tiger Woods affair (or perhaps I should say “affairs”), it may be this: When a celebrity turns himself or herself into a brand, as Tiger has done so effectively, then the challenges of maintaining brand integrity, and the risks associated with what trademark lawyers sometimes [...]

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I have noticed recently while playing around on YouTube and Google Video seeking exam question fodder that many fans of popular movies and TV shows who make mash-up videos of material from the shows post a notice at the beginning or end of their video saying “no copyright infringement intended”.  It strikes me that this [...]

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Networks. In my youth, the term was most familiar to me as the word for large, national television stations. NBC was at the bottom of a small heap in the late 1970s. If I recall correctly, Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show supported most of the network in general. Now remember, there were only three [...]

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In my ongoing attempt to blog exclusively about IP issues related to Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight franchise, here’s a story I just picked up from CNN online.  A 22 year old woman from Chicago faces 3 years in prison for taping 2-3 minutes of the recently released Twilight movie (New Moon) at a birthday [...]

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If you don’t know what I am talking about, it’s your loss. A cautionary tale, might I add.

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Cross posted from The Faculty Lounge.
So while enjoying the guilty pleasure of watching the Today show at a hotel room yesterday morning, I – along with the rest of the world – heard the public declaration from favorite Family Ties mom, Meredith Baxter, that she is now officially coming out as a lesbian.  Extract from [...]

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Wired magazine ran an interesting competition starting on August 13. Writer Evan Ratliff who had written about how people disappear tried to disappear from the world and everyone he knew while Wired encouraged and helped people try and find him. The winner would receive $5,000. Ratliff explained his motivation:
It’s one thing to report on the [...]

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The Boise State Broncos football team is unbeaten this year and ranked in the top 10.  But the university scored off the field the other day:  Broncos 1, the rest of the sporting world zero.
What’s the big win?  Boise State received a trademark registration for the color blue in connection with “Entertainment services, namely, the [...]

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