January 5th 2009
The sky is falling on ICANN’s ill-considered gTLD policy. I’ve been a skeptic of ICANN due to its incredibly slow response to fixing its own rules enable domain tasting.Also, last year its own domain was hacked, which didn’t increase anyone’s opinion of its chops as the world’s domain authority. I’ve read in disbelief as this […]
December 22nd 2008
In what could have been a last-second shakedown effort, the RIAA has seen fit to ignore a judge’s order preventing the use of names determined through the discovery phase of Motown Record Company vs. John Doe from being used for anything beyond simple discovery. “The disclosure of such information is ordered pursuant to 20 U.S.C. […]
December 19th 2008
The Wall Street Journal reports that the RIAA has decided to shift an ISP-focused enforcement approach, which would result in prosecution of individual P2P sharers only in extraordinary circumstances. Since 2003, the recording industry has opened legal proceedings against 35,000 people, including children, single mothers, and a dead person. It’s been a PR nightmare, inspired animosity […]
December 13th 2008
The core palette of my firm’s new website has changed to white and a medium soft gray. That sounds pretty light. But these soft elements help create a canvas for the site’s accents: the use of stronger photo elements and the introduction of orange as a highlight color. Here’s an example of how an image […]
December 11th 2008
Tip of the hat to Gamasutra. A group of students at Redmond, WA-based DigiPen Institute of Technology spent three semesters working on a game that went on to win some awards. Unfortunately, part of the admissions process for this program included signing over the copyright of anything they created for assignments. The students incorporated and […]
December 10th 2008
And speaking of dinosaurs… Apparently, Godzilla isn’t just a monster; he’s the mascot for Japanese intellectual property lawyers! In a very interesting article in Wired, David Kravets describes the extent the legal team at Toho Co. Ltd will go to protect the name ‘Godzilla.’ Toho has gone after Honda, a Napa Valley vineyard who produced […]
December 6th 2008
Are video games the future? A colleague and I have been discussing what areas of legal practice will thrive in this economic downturn. There’s growing buzz about video-game law as a hot niche practice area. The Xconomy blog suggests casual video games, those without monthly subscriptions and fancy gear, may be recession-proof. Sheppard, Mullin, Richte […]
December 5th 2008
Naughty or Nice? The recording industry has described the free airplay their songs receive on AM and FM radio as “a form of piracy.” It has sued customers for copying purchased CDs to their own computers, and for selling or simply tossing out unsolicited promotional CDs. In a year in which arguably the best album is […]
December 4th 2008
Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson filed a counterclaim recently against the RIAA. At the heart of that filing is a challenge to the constitutionality of the RIAA’s suits against those who download music from file-sharing services. Nesson, who founded the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, is going to bat for Joel Tenenbaum, […]
December 3rd 2008
Each quarter, Google issues a brief summary of the legal threats it faces through its quarterly SEC 10-Q filings. Here’s that part of Google’s 10-Q Filing for September 30, 2008. Note 11. Contingencies Legal Matters Companies have filed trademark infringement and related claims against us over the display of ads in response to user queries […]
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