Blog: What’s a fact?
Today’s NYTimes contains not one but two essays excoriating the writer John D’Agata for what trademark lawyers recognize in a different setting as the tort of counterfeiting, or passing off.  In the world of goods, this is fake iPads on the streets of lower Manhattan. In the case of John D’Agata, it [...]

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Blog:  Why I Teach.
A former student writes:
Yesterday, I received some good news: I have been offered — and will be accepting — a job as a trademark examiner at the PTO starting in May. It took a little longer than expected, but I finally found a way to couple my interest in trademark law [...]

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The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research will be publishing a special issue dedicated to law and virtual worlds.   Dan Hunter, Melissa de Zwart, and I will be editing the issue.  The Call for Papers and more information can be found here: http://bit.ly/CFP-lawvirtual
Here’s an excerpt from the site:
This special issue will [...]

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Blog: A new book by Madisonian Brett Frischmann is on the cusp of release. “Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources” now has its own page at Amazon.com.
Its timing couldn’t be better. Passions over the proposed SOPA (and Protect IP/PIPA, and OPEN, and related) legislation have barely cooled, but debates will certainly continue over Internet [...]

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[DISCLAIMER: It is not long after someone meets me that they learn I’m from West Virginia.  I am fiercely proud of my home state, and a loyal Mountaineer fan.  (In fact, way back when, I got married on West Virginia’s birthday. On purpose.)  So, I am delighted to write a post about two of my [...]

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RIAA:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/opinion/what-wikipedia-wont-tell-you.html
Mike Masnick’s line-by-line reply:  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120208/01453517694/riaa-totally-out-touch-lashes-out-google-wikipedia-everyone-who-protested-sopapipa.shtml
 
Hat tip to Lauren Gelman.

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This is as good a place as any to note a couple of short pieces that caught my eye recently and that seem to have something to do with one another, at least to my way of thinking.  Because, in a sense, they each resonate with my ways of thinking.
First is Jonah Lehrer’s “Groupthink,” from [...]

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This is my second post over at Concurring Opinions for the symposium on Marvin Ammori’s Free Speech Architecture article.
There is one principle that I would add to the five principles that Marvin examines in the article:  nondiscrimination.  It seems to me that across public and private, physical and virtual ”space” contexts (and judicial opinions), one persistent principle [...]

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There is an interesting blog symposium at Concurring Opinions about Marvin Ammori’s Free Speech Architecture article.  I am participating in the symposium this week, and here is my first post:
Thank you to Marvin for an excellent article to read and discuss, and thank you Concurring Opinions for providing a public forum for our discussion.
In the article, [...]

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The following is a trademark disclaimer that I found in a textbook recently, although I’m not sure that ‘disclaimer’ is the correct term.  I haven’t noticed provisions drafted like this before and I’m really not sure what it’s getting at.  I’d be interested in others’ thoughts…
“All terms mentioned in this book that are known to [...]

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The Dutch Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling in the Runescape theft case today.  You can find the ruling here, and here’s a Google-translated version.  The ruling cites to the work of my friend Professor Arno Lodder, who has been keeping close tabs on the case, as well as to my book and to my [...]

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