It’s been great fun to blog here at Madisonian. So much fun, in fact, that I’ve launched a blog of my own, The Fire of Genius. At TFOG, I’ll focus on patent law, i.p. law, and some questions about creativity and innovation. I hope to see you in the comments there, and [...]

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Yesterday, the Federal Circuit issued a quite important decision in the area of willful infringement. The decision, before the court on mandamus, is In re Echostar. The key question in the matter is the scope of the waiver created by Echostar’s reliance on legal advice as a way to dispel the notion that [...]

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A new A.P. story about differing views on laptops in the classroom (and some professors’ efforts to bar them) prompt Gordon Smith at Conglomerate to offer more reflections on the matter (as well as great links to a thread at Althouse). My views are strongly similar to Gordon’s. Blawgs have hit the topic [...]

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Will Baude, at Crescat Sententia, offers some engaging thoughts on the creation of a Spanish version of The Star Spangled Banner.
In passing, Baude makes the following observation: “[T]he translation of official texts is rife with all sorts of riddles. My dim recollection is that there were proposals in the First Congress to publish the [...]

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If you’re a fan, as I am, of Henry Petroski’s work, you may enjoy this article from The New York Times. An especially interesting bit, in connection with a federal work group on the nuclear waste storage problem: “Knowledge of failure is crucial in considering this kind of problem, Dr. Petroski said. ‘I basically [...]

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Earlier this week, the Supreme Court once again asked for the views of the Solicitor General on a pending petition for review. That brings the total number of requested CVSGs in patent cases to about 4 [it's 3; see below]. This particular patent infringement case, which began as AT&T v. Microsoft, raises questions [...]

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Fascinating post at Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type, about the Google AdSense program for putting targeted ads on your webpage and earning money back from clicks. (There is, of course, an AdSense blog.) According to Carr, “[i]t sounds totally win-win, but there’s a catch: Google doesn’t pay you until your AdSense balance goes over [...]

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It’s Easter. That can mean only one thing: Peeps. And stories about Peeps. (Okay, I guess it’s two things.)
For today’s New York Times take on the humble Peep, we have this tidbit.
Of course, the best web resource about Peeps, other than the official Peep site, is the Peep Research site.
(Legal theory [...]

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A little National Law Journal article about Wednesday’s argument in the eBay case, here.
I stand by my assessment in my earlier exchange with Mike: it’s a blockbuster, come what may.
UPDATE 1: And an interesting piece from Fortune magazine.
UPDATE 2: And this from c|net news.
UPDATE 3: The A.P. story.
UPDATE 4: Coverage of today’s [...]

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I remember Adam Curry from his vjay days on MTV.
He’s recently prevailed against a print magazine in a copyright case in the Netherlands. The case is important, I think, because the magazine published photos that Curry had authored and then posted on Flickr, the photo-sharing-and- social-tagging site. (It’s easy enough to find photos [...]

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Volokh Conspiracy blogger and GW Law School Prof Orin Kerr has launched a solo blog, OrinKerr.com, focused on “law, the legal academy, and the legal profession.” I look forward to being a regular reader.
And can anyone be surprised that there are already interesting comments about Kerr’s new venture from Dan Solove (at CoOp) and [...]

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Tomorrow, Lewis & Clark Law School (where I teach) will host a conference entitled “Open Access Publishing and the Future of Legal Scholarship.” It’s the second annual Spring Symposium for the Lewis & Clark Law Review. In addition to the materials you’ll find at the web page for the conference itself, I’ve created [...]

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A fun article in today’s New York Times about chimpanzee cooperation.
A key paragraph: “In one series of experiments, Dr. Hare, Alicia P. Melis and Michael Tomasello placed an adult chimpanzee in a cage, outside of which was a plank with food on it. It was possible to get the food by pulling on [...]

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According to this news bit, Wikipedia hits two 1-millionth-marks this week: registered users, and encyclopedia articles. According to Wikipedia’s main page this morning, this is the one millionth article.
(And here’s one about the labrador retriever breed, which I’ve consulted in connection with a newly arrived member of my household.)
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The Supreme Court denied review today in the Phillips claim construction case. It granted review, however, in the MedImmune v. Genentech case. The question is whether a patent licensee must breach the license agreement before suing (by declaratory judgment action) to challenge the patent’s validity. The Federal Circuit has held that a [...]

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Do humans swim faster in syrup, or water? Researchers at the University of Minnesota conducted an empirical test, and you can read about the results. Chalk up another for Christiaan Huygens, who, it appears, had the better of Isaac Newton on this point.
We also learn this from the lead experimenter, Edward Cussler: “The [...]

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Prof. Kaplan’s 1966 self not only describes the web, he describes a new publishing paradigm it facilitates, known today as open access publishing (described, with links, at Wikipedia here). This catches my eye because, as I mentioned in a recent post styled “Whither Law Reviews?”, we’re having a conference here at Lewis & [...]

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As I noted yesterday, I’m reading Prof. Kaplan’s 1967 classic, An Unhurried View of Copyright. In Part III of the book (styled “Proposals and Prospects”), he looks into his future and sees … our present. In a particularly compelling passage, after urging that “we must look more closely at the technological environment of [...]

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Spurred by William Patry’s recent observation that Benjamin Kaplan’s 1967 book An Unhurried View of Copyright “is well-known in this country but rarely read,” I’ve been reading it. And it is a too-brief pleasure! The book’s three parts correspond to the three Carpentier Lectures Prof. Kaplan delivered in 1966 at Columbia Law School. [...]

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The Copyright Office has released its report on the orphan works problem. The website for downloading the report is here.
UPDATE: Eric Goldman’s take on the report is here.
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