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Michael Madison

Popular IP

Gotta Catch 'Em All!What’s the best way to bring IP issues into the public consciousness? As 2005 wound down, three items caught my eye, and two of them did the various IP systems — or the public — no favors. One was Nintendo’s demand that cancer researchers at Sloan-Kettering rename a gene. Henceforth, the Pokemon gene is now the far more prosaic Zbtb7. Laura Quilter covered of the Nature report on the exchange. Two was the paroxysm of anger over the possibility that a patent lawsuit would shut down the Blackberry system. James Surowiecki’s piece in the New Yorker was among the more temperate popular reviews. Three — the Baby Bear of the bunch — involved Hershey’s chocolate.

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No, the Other Bosman

Several years ago, I had an idea for a paper that was based on a coincidence. The first case to be litigated under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (for domain names), and the test case challenging the transfer system for European football players, involved men who shared the same last name. The European Bosman opened the market for football players to free agency and limited the rights of football clubs. The American Bosman was a player in a market for domain names that the UDRP largely closed to free agency, by tilting it heavily in favor of trademark owners.

I never wrote the paper, which is probably just as well. The parallel doesn’t really work.

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Economics and Empirics

Economists have proved the existence of the time-money continuum! (Spotted at Marginal Revolution, via Conglomerate.)