Prequel:  A Sequel in the Rye
J.D. Salinger has persuaded a district court judge to elevate a temporary restraining order to a preliminary injunction in his effort to prevent American audiences from reading 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, which uses an aged Holden Caulfield in a narrative sequel to - or parody of — [...]

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Matthew B. Crawford’s new book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work,” gives IP lawyers quite a lot to think about.  (An excerpt appeared recently in the New York Times magazine, and the book as a whole originated as an essay at The New Atlantis.)  Crawford is offering a modern take [...]

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Michael Chabon has an elegiac  essay in the New York Review of Books (”Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood”) on what is denied to our children:
This is the kind of door-to-door, all-encompassing escort service that we adults have contrived to provide for our children. We schedule their encounters for them, driving them to and from [...]

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The gang at Language Log provides a thorough overview of the meaning and function of the vuvuzela, the device that provided the soundtrack to the just-concluded Confederations Cup soccer tournament in South Africa (the result in yesterday’s final:  Brazil 3 - USA 2, more or less as I predicted last week).  It leads me to [...]

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It appears that the Netflix Prize has been won. 
Thet Netflix Prize is a $1 million prize being offered by Netflix for development of a “movie recommendation system” that is 10% better than Netflix’s own Cinematch system as predicting the movie preferences of Netflix subscribers.  [Older story from the NYTimes here.]  From the prize website, here are [...]

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The recent “World Copyright Summit,” sponsored by CISAC (the “International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers”) only came to my attention after the fact. Glancing through the program materials, I came across a framing editorial for the conference that begins this way:
Faced with an era of digital disruption, what would Michelangelo think of the [...]

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For the moment, J.D. Salinger has in hand an order prohibiting the distribution in the U.S. of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, which is either an unauthorized sequel to (i.e., derivative work, based on) and an invasion of the privacy of the author of The Catcher in the Rye, more or less akin [...]

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I’ve had the pleasure of wandering through the Metropolitan Museum in New York many times over the years, but for the first time, perhaps, yesterday I was fortunate to see an exhibition that really changed the way I (and perhaps others) think about the world of art.  If you’re able, run - do not walk [...]

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The recording industry’s inquisitorial pursuit of downloaders has reached new heights - or depths.  Map Boon onto the interests represented by the RIAA and Katy onto the interests represented by the accused in this sequence from Animal House:
Boon:  Unbelievable. A new low. I’m so ashamed.  Almost sorry l missed it.
Katy:  What did you do, human sacrifice?
Boon: [...]

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Finally, the United States bred a world class soccer talent.  But Giuseppe Rossi was born in New Jersey to Italian parents and dreamed of playing for Italy, as the rules of international soccer allow.  Now he is not only playing for Italy - but he’s scoring the goals that beat the United States.
The United States, [...]

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I drove to Boulder and back earlier this month, which is nothing of consequence except for the fact that I live in Pittsburgh and, with an excursion to Minnesota on the return, I put 3,400 miles on our vehicle.  Picture me in a large blue pickup under the blue Nebraska sky, cruising comfortably in a [...]

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Here in Pittsburgh, civic enthusiasts are so giddy over the prospect of the G-20 summit coming to town next Fall that that they just can’t help themselves.  A local marketing firm has announced that it is launching a campaign to create a network of links that would cause the Google search engine to reply “Pittsburgh” [...]

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The Pirate Party has planted another official flag:  Finland, where its 5,000 signatures made it an officially recognized party.  [H/T:  Orgtheory.net]
About the Pirate Party, from Wikipedia:
The Pirate Party (Swedish: Piratpartiet) is a political party in Sweden. Its sudden popularity has given rise to parties with the same name and similar goals in Europe and worldwide. [...]

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Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker reported on the copyright story behind Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which I haven’t seen.  Among the pieces in the museum that come alive as part of the film, paintings literally leap off the walls:
There is an animated (and occasionally talkative) Degas ballerina, a Jackson Pollock [...]

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Because I’m not a tax lawyer, I didn’t see Paul Caron’s coverage of the Court of Appeal judgment in the Pringles case, but I did see the New York Times opinion piece this morning.  It’s interesting to watch an obscure little case generate so many different interpretations.
The facts are pretty simple:  Most food items are [...]

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[Cross-posted from Concurring Opinions]
I just came back from seeing the new Pixar animated film Up .  It’s a charracteristically charming Pixar effort; all thumbs up!  Plus, I got these neat-o 3D glasses.  There’s a little IP angle to the film, though, and I want to use that to anchor this last of my guest posts.
It [...]

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[Cross-posted from Concurring Opinions]
This recent New Yorker piece about “Baselworld,” the annual watchmakers’ confab in Switzerland (Patricia Marx, “Face Value,” May 25, 2009) included a throwaway line that I found fascinating.  Baselworld is so large that it has its own police force and “a judiciary to settle trademark disputes.” Whoa. Huh?
Technorati Tags: baselworld, trademark, private [...]

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[Cross-posted from Concurring Opinions]
The world is again safe for trademark law, now that the National Rifle Association has put an end to efforts at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to name the university’s eagle mascot “Eddie.”
For 20 years, the eagle has been the mascot of athletic teams at UW-L. Only earlier this month, however, did [...]

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[Cross-posted in part from Concurring Opinions]
I posted earlier about the Virginia Law Review In Brief responses to Dotan Oliar’s and Chris Sprigman’s UVa Law Review article, There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy, 94 Va. L. Rev. 1787 (2008).
In Brief just published Oliar and Sprigman’s [...]

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Following up on Ann’s post yesterday, and cross-posted from Concurring Opinions:
Yesterday, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University’s Washington College of Law and the Center for Social Media at AU’s School of Communication released “Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend,” a video that accompanies and explains the Code of Best [...]

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