“The president is a person, not a product,” [David Axelrod] was said to tell [Desirée Rogers].  “We shouldn’t be referring to him as a brand.”  — New York Times, 3/12/10.
Which recalls:

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I am just finishing a marvelous book about cartography and the discovery and naming of America, The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name (by Toby Lester, Simon & Schuster, 2009).  The Fourth Part of the World [...]

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The law sometimes takes its integrity in its hands when the Federal Circuit gets its hands on a copyright law question, and the Federal Circuit’s opinion the other day in Gaylord v. United States, involving fair use, bears out that proposition in spades.  Gaylord sculpted a column of soldiers as part of the Korean War [...]

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Plagiarism either makes you a bad person, or bad people are plagiarists, or both.  Either way, it’s obviously a moral crime, not an ethical economic one.  This morning brings yet another example of someone made to do penance:
Nick Simmons, the son of the rock star Gene Simmons, sought to make a name for himself in [...]

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My household is one of those affected by yesterday’s worldwide PlayStation3 “crash,” which is reported here on CNN (briefly) and no doubt in far greater, and angrier, detail elsewhere.  Sony is broadcasting status updates via Twitter, though none too swiftly.  (Search #Ps3 for updates.)  The Sony PS3 blog has some information.
It will be interesting to watch [...]

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The Sunday New York Times usually offers a number of interesting features on IP and tech topics, and yesterday was no exception.  My favorite piece was this one, about the demise of the old-style Repo Man.  As in so many areas, human judgment and discipline are being superseded by surveillance, data, and automation:
At the core of [...]

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Nominated for an Oscar (er, Academy Award) as a Best Animated Short, Logorama:

With apologies for the relative lateness of this post, trademark folks: Assume that the many marks on display were used without permission of their respective owners.  Discuss.
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Here are two videos about XXX products.  With the Vancouver Olympics in full swing, many of us are extra-attentive to all things Canadian, so the second — which features Canadian native and NBA superstar Steve Nash actually promoting XXX products — is especially compelling.  The IP angle, naturally, is whether anyone thinks that the second [...]

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From Pittsburgh to Washington DC and north to Baltimore and Boston, cars in giant snowbanks mean that the thoughts of property law professors turn again to an eternal phenomenon:  If I dig out a parking spot to free my car, do I “own” the resulting parking space?  If so, why, and in what sense?  Yes, [...]

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2010 seems destined to be the year of the book. There is only time today to collect a handful of links to pieces that have caught my eye recently as I’ve been hopping around the country.  That time exists because my university has declared a snow day – for the second day in a [...]

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Brian Leiter is posting occasional links to law faculty blogs.
Here is an updated version of an inventory of law faculty blogs from around the world that I posted back in 2007.

University of Pittsburgh School of Law
University of Houston Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center
University of Chicago Law School
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
University of Alberta Faculty of Law
University [...]

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There’s a new joint venture in town:  A website that aggregates academic research on IT policy, from IP to privacy, to network governance, to the cloud, to antitrust, to economic growth.
Technology | Academics| Policy (TAP).  http://www.techpolicy.com/
Interesting collection of sponsors.  Check it out.
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From today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Late Monday afternoon, employees at O’Hara grocer Giant Eagle Inc. got test results showing some hash brown products sold by the retailer contained a bacterium that can cause a potentially serious infection.
Within hours, an automated system was busy calling more than 300,000 Giant Eagle Advantage Card holders who records showed had purchased [...]

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Erich Segal died the other day.  He was famous (or infamous) as the author of “Love Story,” the book and then movie that gave us the line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  The movie was a smash but is utterly forgettable; if you’re looking for a throwback experience featuring its star, Ryan [...]

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Combine the Streisand Effect and a trademark lawyer with wit and resources, and you get the South Butt’s Answer to the lawsuit filed against it by the North Face. This is Half Dome versus Half Ass, the bullying socialism of the North Face (according to the Answer) against freedom of speech and the American Dream [...]

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The following is a first cut at a list of Lost Classics of Intellectual Property Law – Patent.
For background and explanation of the Lost Classics series, read this earlier post.
(Ordered alpha by author)
Donald W. Banner, Innovation, Patents and the National Interest, 12 Intell. Prop. L. Rev. 37 (1980)
Ward S. Bowman, Jr., Patent and Antitrust: A [...]

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The following is a first cut at a list of Lost Classics of Intellectual Property Law – Trademark.
For background and explanation of the Lost Classics series, read this earlier post.
(Ordered alpha by author)
Ralph S. Brown, Jr., Advertising and the Public Interest: Legal Protection of Trade Symbols, 57 Yale L.J. 1165 (1948)
Rudolf Callmann, The Law of [...]

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The following is a first cut at a list of Lost Classics of Intellectual Property Law – Copyright.
For background and explanation of the Lost Classics series, read this earlier post.
(Ordered alpha by author)
Horace G. Ball, The Law of Copyright and Literary Property (1944)
Augustine Birrell, Seven Lectures on the Law and History of Copyright in Books [...]

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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
It is 1710 all over again. Like their ancient English ancestors, 21st century book publishers are throwing authors under the bus in a race to secure rights in the electronic economy. Jonathan Galassi, president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, There’s More to Publishing Than Meets the [...]

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Some time ago on this blog, I ranted a bit about how younger IP scholars either have lost the knack of knowing something about the history of the discipline – or never acquired it in the first place.
Off and on over the last year, I assembled lists of key pieces of scholarship and key [...]

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