Back in October, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell explained the economics of video games as his company sees it. The Geekwire article is worth the read. For now, I’ll point out that he admits “We don’t understand what’s going on” and uses the language of co-creation of value, which I happen to believe is the current [...]

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OK, that title is a riff on a line from The Player. I loved it when the film came out and still do. It says so much of nothing, but captures a vibe that persists. Yet again it seems the film industry is in trouble, or rather doldrums. The Times reports that this year’s box [...]

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So, I read that Louis Vuitton is suing Warner Brothers for the line “Careful, that is a Louis Vuitton” in the movie “The Hangover II.” This got my hackles up – after all this IS a nominative use, unlike Bella’s Twighlight Jacket, and it is a non-trademark use – a description of the bag that’s presumably [...]

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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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The Supreme Court heard oral argument in Mayo v. Prometheus Labs.  The case will hopefully provide some guidance on the patenting of medical diagnostics, but because the patent suffers from some real drawbacks, I’m not so sure.  I’ll explain why below. If you are interested in more detail, my 2008 article “Everything is Patentable” discusses [...]

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SOPA — the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, and its cousins and substitutes — has been all over the news recently.  Proponents rely heavily on rhetorical appeals to the idea that the US must act aggressively to stop “theft” of intellectual property by “rogue” website operators.  That “theft” business has been endlessly and repeatedly critiqued by analysts of [...]

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I want to pick up on a topic nicely covered by Greg Lastowka — the recent case involving Bella’s jacket from the movie Twilight. Perhaps you’ve heard of it — the movie, I mean, not the case.
There is a maxim that “Hard Cases Make Bad Law.” Today I want to talk about a lesser used [...]

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I feel like I’m scooping Jacqui here, since she’s the Madisonian Twilight expert, but I was so bothered by the recent district court decision in the Bella’s Jacket Brouhaha that I’m chiming in on the intersection of intellectual property and teen vampires.
Twilight is probably part of basic 21st century cultural literacy, so I’ll presume [...]

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Many IP profs watch legislation, and we write about the way proposed laws are good or bad or wise or imprudent. I think the way the IP and online space are going will require more on the technology side. For example, the recent debates on the PROTECT IP Bill and SOPA had some interesting comments [...]

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Analog: The Resurrection is coming to a store near you. At least it looks that way. The Times reports that vinyl is making a comeback. I happen to have a fair amount of vinyl from when I saved up to buy LPs as a kid. But now companies like Goota Groove are among about 20 [...]

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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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OK, at some level I understand that this is a serious lawsuit. As reported by the AP, Hooters has accused a former executive of taking confidential information to his new employer, rival Twin Peaks restaurants.
Now, I’d never heard of Twin Peaks restaurants before (do I smell some kind of trademark or dilution claim out [...]

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I saw a paper recently that made an argument of a familiar sort: 
Business and technology are changing the nature of X artifact that has been the object of regulation via IP.  How we think about and apply relevant IP needs to change as well.  In this case, the argument was about books becoming e-books, and [...]

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Does anyone know anything about IP rights (or lack thereof) in the jigsaw puzzle industry?
My son has recently become enamored with 3D puzzles and is currently working on a world globe like this one.  So I was wondering if the jigsaw puzzle companies typically assert any IP rights in these creations.  Obviously images on puzzles [...]

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This morning as I was being ordered by my four year old to put on her Little Mermaid video, she explained to me:  ”Mommy, you don’t copy this DVD or you go in jail.”  I’d say the content industries’ message is getting through loud and clear.

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As I noted in prior posts on this blog, a key conclusion of my forthcoming article Patent Troll Myths is that patent plaintiffs that don’t make anything – pejoratively called “trolls,” get their patents from many companies that did attempt to make something (or from individuals). Thus, I argue that trolls are a mirror of [...]

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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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Someone asked me a question yesterday that I just couldn’t answer so I thought I’d try it out here.  As many of us know, the U.S. is unique in having a copyright registration system.  In other countries, there is no need to register a work in order to obtain statutory remedies etc.  This decreases the [...]

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A recent decision by Magistrate Judge Ryu of the Northern District of California prompts me to write about what should be a basic requirement of any lawsuit against users alleged to have participated in the exchange of copyright protected works using the BitTorrent peer to peer technology: that the defendants have participated in the same [...]

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The E.U. Parliament has just adopted a Directive that is intended to better protect consumer rights in relation to digital content.  The text of the Directive is available here.  There is also a summary by Natali Helberger here.

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