A divided 9th Circuit panel decided U.S. v. Nosal today. The case initially looks like a simple employee trade secret theft case, but the Court’s interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act has potentially far reaching ramifications. Here’s the thing – the court (in my view) reached the right ruling with the right statutory [...]

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Today, the legal academy lost a good friend and colleague. Keith Aoki passed away after struggling with illness. Those of us who had the privilege of working with Keith will remember him for his intelligence, wit, energy, and caring. I was lucky enough to know him as a fellow intellectual property professor, [...]

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The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals recently decided an important patent civil procedure case (en banc) about the scope of injunctions. Tivo obtained an injunction against Echostar in a long-running patent infringement case relating to DVR software. The injunction included two features:
1. Don’t distribute any new products that infringe, and
2. Disable recording in a particular list [...]

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A preliminary injunction hearing was held the other day in Los Angeles in Buzz Aldrin’s right of publicity lawsuit against Topps, which makes trading cards.  He accuses Topps of including his image and likeness on an “American Heroes” trading card and package without his permission, and for its own commercial benefit, in violation of California [...]

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Congratulations to Cynthia Ho on publication of her new book with OUP, Access to Medicine in the Global Economy:  International Agreements on Patents and Related Rights. An important addition to the international IP literature…

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[cross-posted at Prawfsblawg]
My study of non-practicing patent plaintiffs was sparked by a discussion with a colleague about where patent trolls come from. My theory was that patent trolls tended to enforce patents that startups obtained, but that lay fallow when the startups lost funding. Unfortunately, I had no data to back up my intuition, nor [...]

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[cross-posted at Prawfsblawg]
I plan to write a couple posts about my forthcoming article called Patent Troll Myths.  The article is a culmination of two years of data gathering and analysis from many different sources.
But first, how can we assess myths about patent trolls  if we don’t know what they are? There are two ways people [...]

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Eric Johnson has some excerpts and nice commentary about Jonathan Tasini’s lawsuit against the Huffington Post.
For those who haven’t seen it, the argument is that those who have voluntarily submitted published content are now entitled to unjust enrichment damages. This case looks like a loser, and even if it’s not, it should be.

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[cross-posted at Prawfsblawg]
Dave Fagundes just posted a nice discussion about the difference between internal and external critiques of a paper and how those critiques should be addressed at workshops. The internal critique challenges the internal logic of a thesis – whether it is supported by the evidence and argument. The external critique challenges priors – [...]

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I am pleased to note the addition of a new blogger here at madisonian.net: Professor Megan Carpenter, who teaches at Texas Wesleyan School of Law in Fort Worth. Megan is a copyright and trademark specialist and the director of Texas Wesleyan’s Center for Law and Intellectual Property. I had the pleasure of traveling to her [...]

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Quick, which service do you think has the most strict password requirements I’ve ever encountered? My bank? Mutual funds? My law firm network login? Credit cards? Paypal? Email providers? Configuring my home server for remote access? Electronics sites like newegg.com and amazon.com? Westlaw and Lexis?
No. Not any of those. There is a service that, judging [...]

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I’ve just enjoyed reading John Tehranian’s article:  Parchment, Pixels, & Personhood:  User Rights and the IP (Identity Politics) of IP (Intellectual Property), 82 Colorado L Rev 1 (2011).  SSRN copy available here.  It is a very comprehensive look at the various aspects of copyright law that interfere with the ability of users to enjoy works [...]

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Before I officially leave my vampire literature kick, some folks may be interested in my latest attempt to consider moral rights through the perspective of some supernatural fiction authors (and not just Stephenie Meyer!).  This was a fun article looking at the extent to which some of the digital age ideas about moral rights protections [...]

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[Cross-posted at Prawfsblawg, where I am guest blogging this month]

I’m giving my very first multiple choice exam in cyberlaw this semester. I decided to move to a multiple choice exam for a few reasons:
1. Time: I have 85 students (about half 3L) and I just don’t think I can get the exams graded in time [...]

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Two items of note on this topic recently. First, the NYT reports on NHTSA’s lazy approach to IP overreach by automakers:
For years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has declined to post on its Web site reports from automakers about problems with their cars and about specialized warranty extensions that could save consumers [...]

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Taking fan-fic/fan-film to a new level, the creative minds behind the Emmy Award winning Star Wars Uncut have created a crowd-sourced film-making project that has recreated the first Star Wars movie (ie Episode IV:  A New Hope) in 15 second clips contributed by different amateur film-makers.   The project was the brainchild of Casey Pugh [...]

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I was reading in Entertainment Weekly (yes, even IP profs have some downtime) about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s forthcoming comic book and cartoon series that he is working on with Stan Lee entitled “The Governator”.  Apparently, he thought the title was so cool when he first took office that he registered it as a TM with the [...]

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