The Terrible Towel trademark is on the move again.
The Terrible Towel is a Pittsburgh Steelers tradition.  It’s a piece of cheap yellow (or gold) terrycloth emblazoned with a “Terrible Towel” (TT) logo; Steelers fans twirl the towels by the thousands whenever and wherever the team plays.
Earlier this year, when the owner of the TT mark [...]

[Read more →]

I saw a paper recently that made an argument of a familiar sort: 
Business and technology are changing the nature of X artifact that has been the object of regulation via IP.  How we think about and apply relevant IP needs to change as well.  In this case, the argument was about books becoming e-books, and [...]

[Read more →]

Does anyone know anything about IP rights (or lack thereof) in the jigsaw puzzle industry?
My son has recently become enamored with 3D puzzles and is currently working on a world globe like this one.  So I was wondering if the jigsaw puzzle companies typically assert any IP rights in these creations.  Obviously images on puzzles [...]

[Read more →]

The NYTimes carried a number of pieces recently about surging interest in terminations of transfers of copyright interests, as the window of opportunity for terminations of rights executed just after the current Copyright Act took effect, in 1978, opens.  A lot of popular music released in the late 1970s is still commercially valuable today (who [...]

[Read more →]

This morning as I was being ordered by my four year old to put on her Little Mermaid video, she explained to me:  ”Mommy, you don’t copy this DVD or you go in jail.”  I’d say the content industries’ message is getting through loud and clear.

[Read more →]

Pitchfork has an article about the Tesla Orchestra, a group of people looking to share their love of Tesla coils by using them to play musical tracks.  Tesla coils, to refresh your memory of high school physics class, are disruptive discharge transformer coils that shoot out bolts of electricity.   In its Open Spark Project, The [...]

[Read more →]

Yesterday, Mark Cuban, the very visible(, entrepreneurial, notorious) owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet, weighed in on patent reform.  His comments were posted on The Huffington Post here.

[Read more →]

As I noted in prior posts on this blog, a key conclusion of my forthcoming article Patent Troll Myths is that patent plaintiffs that don’t make anything – pejoratively called “trolls,” get their patents from many companies that did attempt to make something (or from individuals). Thus, I argue that trolls are a mirror of [...]

[Read more →]

I recently returned from our Summer Away program in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  While at the Taos Pueblo, I purchased a pot crafted by an Acoma artist at a small shop.  As I handed the money to the owner, she commented, “This artist has a patent on this design.  No one else can make pots [...]

[Read more →]

While Bruce, in his last post, is lampooning Microsoft I started to think about more “annoying Microsoft” trivia.  Where, oh where, did the paperclip icon go??

[Read more →]

Run program, HAL. HAL, run program. Hello HAL do you read me?
Affirmative, Dave, I read you.
Run program.
I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
What’s the problem, HAL?
Dave, the publisher of that program cannot be verified. You should only run software from publishers you trust.
I installed that program myself, HAL.
This mission is too important for [...]

[Read more →]

From the WSJ blog “Digits” comes this note about the growth of video mashup art and its grudging but growing acceptance by rights owners. EFF’s Corynne McSherry is quoted:  ”‘Companies are realizing, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes all too slowly that, … you can’t fight new technologies,’ she says. ‘You need to adjust your business model to what’s [...]

[Read more →]