To pick up on some earlier discussions that Jacqui Lipton and I have been having about authorship and art (and some of Bruce Boyden’s comments re: the same):  A student who is doing an externship at a local small business incubator told me about a local start-up that seeks to enable people to create art [...]

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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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To follow Mike’s shift toward anti-competitiveness (and beverages):
Dublin Dr. Pepper and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group have settled their trademark licensing dispute and Dublin Dr. Pepper, the beverage darling of the Lonestar State, is no more.
Dublin Dr. Pepper is a Texas favorite.  This original Dr. Pepper was created in 1891, and its birthday is still celebrated [...]

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As reported originally here in Texas Monthly, and most recently here by the TM Daily Post, Robert Earl Keen has taken a creative approach to settling a score (not a lawsuit) with Toby Keith.  (Additional interviews with Keen here and here.)
In an interview with Texas Monthly, Robert Earl Keen discussed the release of his new album, [...]

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I have been thinking a lot about authorship lately.  Perhaps this is because I am learning my first instrument and trying to write my first song.  Or because I failed miserably at a write-a-novel-in-a-month exercise last November.  Or because I am in the middle of a wrestling match with an article.
An interesting episode of the show [...]

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We have received a cease and desist letter demanding that we change the name of our IP center from “Center for Law and Intellectual Property” because it infringes the rights of Fordham University’s “Center on Law and Information Policy.”  The letter also demands that we not use the acronym CLIP whatsoever in reference to our [...]

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[This is largely a comment to Alfred’s post below, but it’s long and I wanted to include some links so put it here as a separate post.  MC]
Perhaps the lawsuit Alfred discusses below could also be filed under “karma”… Last November, Twin Peaks filed a complaint here in the Northern District of Texas alleging that [...]

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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 [...]

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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.

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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 [...]

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Artnet recently published an article about a lawsuit that Janine “Jah Jah” Gordon filed against artist Ryan McGinley, in which she claims that 150 of McGinley’s photographs infringe her copyrights.  Included in the lawsuit is the image on the right below, which was used in a Levi’s advertisement (Levi Strauss is a named co-defendant in [...]

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I just returned from a couple of weeks visiting family back east, where “visiting family” is construed as “driving a couple of hours each day to different locations (locations that all seemed so close to each other when you were back in Texas), where you spend inadequate amounts of time with inadequate numbers of people, and [...]

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I stopped by the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth yesterday, and wandered into the gift shop where I was met with something that made me laugh.  The Modern either has a great sense of humor, an astute awareness of legal disputes, a misconception of source, or a shelf for things-related-to-balloon-animals.

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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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