I have just finished reading John Tehranian’s new book, Infringement Nation:  Copyright 2.0 and You, which I mentioned in a previous post.
While there are a lot of books about digital copyright law already out there, this one is definitely worth a read as it tackles a number of issues differently – or with a [...]

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I’ve often wondered whether it is technically correct to refer to intellectual property infringement as a species of tort law.  We tend not to equate torts with IP in common parlance, but there are certainly similarities, notably with property-based torts like trespass and conversion.  Maybe we don’t use the tort terminology because it runs up [...]

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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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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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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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Press release here.
Congratulations, Mary!  It’s very well deserved.

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I’ve recently been reading Robin Barnes’ book, Outrageous Invasions, about rights of celebrities and public figures to protect their privacy and their reputations in the face of a free press.  The book again makes me think about the relationship between celebrities and the press and that old question about whether celebrities should be expected to [...]

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For patent folks interested in some comparative reading, the Australian federal court just handed down a decision clarifying the “novelty” requirements in the Australian patent statute.  Full text decision can be found here.

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In recent years (and particularly since reading a lot of Bobbi Kwall’s work), I’ve been increasingly interested in motivations for why authors/artists create and in the relationship between economic incentives and creativity.  One of this year’s Oscar nominated documentaries (Exit Through the Gift Shop) is actually an interesting exploration of some of these issues.
It explores [...]

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With thanks to Jim Gibson for initiating a thought-provoking discussion on cyberprof about this issue, apparently Google has just caught out rival search engine Bing in a sting operation for copying Google’s search results (by inserting fake search results in the manner of the Feist case and determining that Bing was copying the fake results).  [...]

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I’ve been watching (and haven’t quite finished) the 2009 documentary, Tales from the Script, which I find very interesting from an IP point of view.  It’s basically a collection of interviews and interesting/frank war stories from Hollywood writers about their experiences preparing, selling, and working with producers and directors on scripts for movies and TV [...]

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For those of you following the various legal issues surrounding the founding of Facebook, it appears that the two Harvard grads who originally claimed that Facebook stole their idea for a social network and hampered their efforts to get to the market first are now seeking to reopen the settlement they agreed to some years [...]

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I just saw this image on amazon.com which immediately brought to mind Raiders of the Lost Ark and, to some extent, Romancing the Stone. Anyone think there could be potential problems here with copyright or trademark?

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For those of you who follow Crazy Frog on YouTube, here’s the seasonal Last Christmas video…

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With thanks to one of my Canadian students for forwarding this to me, it appears that the the Supreme Court of Canada will soon be deciding a case which will determine whether hyperlinks may constitute publication for the purposes of defamation law, such that a person who publishes a hyperlink would be potentially liable in [...]

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So in my continuing quest to complete the Harry Potter series of books before watching the new movie, I’m plugging through Book 7 now.  I started wondering, though, what would happen if a real high school decided to name its houses after those in Harry Potter ie Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin?  Would there be [...]

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With a tremendous debt of gratitude to all of those in IP and cyberlaw circles who have helped me along the way with this project, I wanted to let you know that my book Internet Domain Names, Trademarks, and Free Speech has come out this week in hard copy and eBook formats.  Publisher website details [...]

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With thanks to one of my LL.M. students for sharing this video with me, this is a cute demonstration of one of the differences between rivalrous and nonrivalrous property with respect to copying.
(Nina Paley, Copying Is Not Theft)

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