I am just finishing a marvelous book about cartography and the discovery and naming of America, The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name (by Toby Lester, Simon & Schuster, 2009).  The Fourth Part of the World [...]

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Legal writing programs get staffed in 3 meaningfully different ways. One model relies primarily on part-time instructors (generally adjunct teachers or graduate student fellows) supervised by a director of the program who is sometimes, but not always, a full-time specialist in legal writing. A second model uses a director (sometimes, but not always, [...]

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Meet the ubmbROLLa:

As this blog notes: “It’s a draggable umbrella designed by Qian Jiang & Yiying Wu. Apparently, it’s for people who are so accustomed to traveling with a rolling suitcase, that they can’t make the switch to an umbrella.”

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Let me use this post to suggest one way in which prospective students can begin comparing academic programs. All law schools require their first year students to take a heavily prescribed curriculum. Few, if any electives exist, and indeed the required courses are practically the same at most schools. By contrast, second [...]

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From the Department of You Have To Be Kidding, this article reports:
The yellow traffic light is taking on a new meaning for motorists during these tough economic times: one expensive trap.
According to the National Motorists Association (NMA), some municipalities have been caught shortening the time in which yellow lights are on in order to generate [...]

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Eric Goldman reports here that Rescuecom has dismissed its lawsuit against Google.  Eric strongly suggests this was primarily about Google outlasting a smaller plaintiff with fewer resources, which may well be the case.  And although I was pleased when Rescuecom won on the trademark use issue, as I explained in this post from last year, [...]

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“It must be remembered that, while there are an enormous number of possible permutations of the musical notes of the scale, only a few are pleasing; and much fewer still suit the infantile demands of the popular ear. Recurrence is not therefore an inevitable badge of plagiarism.” Darrell v. Joe Morris Music Co., 113 [...]

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Posted at the request of Prof Giuseppina D’Agostino, Director, IP Osgoode, Intellectual Property, Law and Technology Program, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Canada:
“(1) We have posted a call for applications for the summer 2010 IPilogue
team and we would be very pleased to hear from students at your own
institution.  The call for editors has [...]

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The coming of spring means that thousands of aspiring lawyers will soon have to choose the law school they will attend. Over the last decade or so, rankings like U.S. News and World Report’s have become increasingly important in making those decisions. How heavily should a would-be lawyer rely on these rankings in [...]

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The law sometimes takes its integrity in its hands when the Federal Circuit gets its hands on a copyright law question, and the Federal Circuit’s opinion the other day in Gaylord v. United States, involving fair use, bears out that proposition in spades.  Gaylord sculpted a column of soldiers as part of the Korean War [...]

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A bit overshadowed by all the hubbub over the oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court yesterday handed down an important copyright opinion in Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick. (But see Howard Wasserman, Marcia Coyle.) The court held that Section 411(a) of the Copyright Act, which requires registration of a copyright as [...]

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Plagiarism either makes you a bad person, or bad people are plagiarists, or both.  Either way, it’s obviously a moral crime, not an ethical economic one.  This morning brings yet another example of someone made to do penance:
Nick Simmons, the son of the rock star Gene Simmons, sought to make a name for himself in [...]

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Excerpt from a longer video that is accessible here.

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My household is one of those affected by yesterday’s worldwide PlayStation3 “crash,” which is reported here on CNN (briefly) and no doubt in far greater, and angrier, detail elsewhere.  Sony is broadcasting status updates via Twitter, though none too swiftly.  (Search #Ps3 for updates.)  The Sony PS3 blog has some information.
It will be interesting to watch [...]

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The Sunday New York Times usually offers a number of interesting features on IP and tech topics, and yesterday was no exception.  My favorite piece was this one, about the demise of the old-style Repo Man.  As in so many areas, human judgment and discipline are being superseded by surveillance, data, and automation:
At the core of [...]

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Nominated for an Oscar (er, Academy Award) as a Best Animated Short, Logorama:

With apologies for the relative lateness of this post, trademark folks: Assume that the many marks on display were used without permission of their respective owners.  Discuss.

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