The Supreme Court just struck down the California statute challenged in Brown v. EMA, upholding the lower court decision.  The opinion is here.  I think Scalia, writing for the majority, gets the doctrine quite right.  You can’t just add videogame violence as a new carve-out from the realm of protected speech. Scalia also writes at [...]

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On June 20, ICANN announced that it would be opening up the domain space for new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs),  meaning that anyone will be able to register virtually any word or phrase in almost any language or script as a gTLD.  Up until now, there have been 22 available gTLDs (eg .com, .net, [...]

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While sitting through demonstrations of free online video games (presented by my 5 year old), I noticed some clear similarities between the Johnny Finder games and the Indiana Jones movies.  While the games are clearly not passing themselves off as being officially affiliated with Indiana Jones, there are characters and plot elements that are similar [...]

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Eva Gabrielsson, the girlfriend of the late Stieg Larsson (author of the popular Dragon Tattoo books) has just completed a memoir on her life with the author.  I was struck by the cover design of her book, at least the version to be released in the U.S.  It seems highly reminiscent of the cover designs [...]

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Back in February, for the benefit of copyright geeks I posted about Wild Man Fischer, who “sang” the “song” Merry-Go-Round, the composition at issue in a well-known “new use” copyright case, Cohen v. Paramount Pictures Corp.
Wild Man Fischer died the other day, and the obit in the New York Times (he has an obit in the [...]

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Following on the theme of thoughts that occurred to me as I was teaching Copyright Law this past semester, here’s another. Preparing for the class sessions on substantial similarity, the whole doctrine suddenly struck me as just odd. I don’t mean that it’s vague or inscrutable; anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes with [...]

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I saw and read Louis Menand’s recent essay in The New Yorker, “Live and Learn: Why We Have College,” just in advance of my own daughter’s recent college graduation.  Menand is pondering the present and future of American higher education at a time when, by some accounts, far too many students are enrolled in far [...]

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Brian Frye has an interesting post up over at Concurring Opinions on Friedman v. Guetta, a recent Central District of California case involving an altered photograph of Run-D.M.C. Somewhat like Fairey v. AP, the issues on summary judgement included whether the original photograph was copyrightable and whether Guetta’s use of it was fair. (You can [...]

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We have a theme this week:  Cities and their images.  For earlier posts, see this (San Francisco and Los Angeles), and this (Pittsburgh today), and this (Dallas and Austin).
Let’s add Boston.
As a handful of you know, the Boston Bruins ice hockey team has been competing in the National Hockey League playoffs this Spring.  (As I write, [...]

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Self-promotion alert:  I have a new paper up on SSRN, titled “Contrasts in Innovation: Pittsburgh Then and Now.”   The paper is innovation-related but not IP-related; it is a contribution to a book being edited by Megan Carpenter on how law contributes (or might contribute) to the revival of decaying industrial cities. Here is [...]

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I went to Dallas the other day, which happens infrequently.  While driving around the city, getting both lost and stuck in traffic, I was struck by a couple of bumper stickers I saw.  One read KEEP DALLAS NORMAL, and the other read KEEP DALLAS PLASTIC (with that ringing endorsement, it’s a wonder my visits are [...]

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I heard Train’s “Save Me San Francisco” the other day, and the song made me think of Randy Newman’s “I Love LA.”  Different cities, different tunes, each capturing something cool about a city. Are there other (relatively) recent songs that do the same for other places?

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Down in Baltimore (or depending on your locale, up in Baltimore, over in Baltimore, or out in Baltimore), there is a tempest brewing over the word “Hon” — as in, “Can I warm that up for you, hon?”
The term has long been a part of Baltimore’s collective culture, so much so that the city is [...]

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Law faculty who teach the James Bond copyright case — MGM, Inc. v. American Honda Motor Co., 900 F. Supp. 1287 (C.D. Cal. 1995) — might be interested in this exchange between Ian Fleming and one Geoffrey Boothroyd regarding the origin of one of Bond’s signature character elements. The lawsuit involved the filmed version of [...]

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I promise to give up after this one, but here’s a link to an SNL skit I recently discovered starring Hugh Laurie (TV’s “Dr House”) as a ghosthunter.
Hugh Laurie as a Ghosthunter

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This isn’t a very serious contribution to the blog, but it’s Friday and I just couldn’t resist this short video showing the perils of pre-taping lectures at home…

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This week, the Supreme Court issued a nearly unanimous opinion in Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB, a case dealing with an issue so seemingly unimportant (to me, at least) that I had forgotten it was even on the docket. In short, the Court held 8-1 that inducing patent infringement required knowledge of the patent.
Well, duh. Proof [...]

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Read through Atul Gawande’s recent commencement address to the most recent graduates of Harvard Medical School and ponder, as I have been trying to do, whether it maps onto lawyers and legal education.  There is lots here, too, for students of innovation and creativity generally.
A taste:
I do not believe society should be forced to choose [...]

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The May 31 2011 e-version of the Chronicle of Higher Education was filled with copyright law-related stories, including this one about the work of Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi at American University in connection with “best practices in fair use” projects.
I particularly liked the concluding section of the piece:
Sandra Aistars, executive director of the Copyright [...]

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