Intellectual Property Law

Recent @cyberlaw posts on Twitter

Posted on September 02, 2009
I’ve been much more active lately on Twitter than here on the blog, for a variety of reasons. Most of them are work related, it’s nice to be busy! With the limited time I’ve had, it’s been much easier to post quick links to interesting articles on Twitter...

Will Facebook username squatting be a problem?

Posted on June 11, 2009
On June 13th, at Midnight eastern time, the social networking site Facebook will allow users, and administrators of fan pages with more than 1000 fans, to register vanity URLS. Here are links to the announcement and to the FAQ for page administrators about the process...

Slides from DMCA presentation - and Thanks!

Posted on May 27, 2009
I’ve been meaning to put these up for a while, here are the slides from the presentation I gave to the Chicago Bar Association’s seminar on website operator liability on May 15, 2009. My presentation focused on the DMCA and discussed four recent cases...

Blawg Review #213

Posted on May 25, 2009
(Photo credit to Markbult under a Creative Commons license.) Welcome to the Towel Day edition of Blawg Review! Towel Day began in 2001 as a tribute to Douglas Adams. Some of you may recall that my Blawg Review #42 was also a tribute to Douglas. The first Towel Day was held on May 25, 2001, [...

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T-1 day to Towel Day edition of Blawg Review - So what?s a hoopy frood?

Posted on May 24, 2009
Tomorrow, the Blawg Review we’ve been leading up to will be published, on Towel Day. Those who have sent me pictures with their towels will be rewarded with links and praise. They are also hoopy froods, since they know where their towel is. Where does that line come from? Well, here’s the line [...

T-2 Days to Towel Day Edition of Blawg Review - the Multimedia nature of Hitchhikers

Posted on May 23, 2009
We’re coming down the home stretch folks, just two more days to the Towel Day edition of Blawg Review. There’s still a small bit of time, law bloggers and twitterers, to send me your pictures with your towels. Send them to kthompson@cyberlawcentral...

T-3 days to Towel Day edition of Blawg Review - Time for a drink

Posted on May 22, 2009
May 25, 2009 is Towel Day, so Blawg Review 213 will have a Towel Day theme! Towel Day is held every May 25th to celebrate the life of Douglas Adams, who wrote the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. Some of you may recall that my first Blawg Review #42 was in honor of [...

T-4 Days to Towel Day edition of Blawg Review - More about DNA

Posted on May 21, 2009
We’re now four days away from the Towel Day edition of Blawg Review, #213. Law bloggers and twitterers, I still need your photos with towels! Send them to me at kthompson@cyberlawcentral.com. Time is running out. Don’t complain to me about your lack of time to enter, the plans have been posted at [...

T-5 days to Towel Day Edition - Wolfram Alpha style

Posted on May 20, 2009
We’re now 5 days away from the Towel Day edition of Blawg Review. I still need your pictures with your towels for inclusion in the Review with a link back. Please send the pictures to kthompson@cyberlawcentral.com, G or PG rated only please! Have you seen the new Wolfram Alpha computational engine? You can type [...

T-6 days to Towel Day Edition of Blawg Review

Posted on May 19, 2009
As a reminder, the Towel Day Edition of Blawg Review is coming on May 25, 2009. Towel Day is an annual day held in memory of Douglas Adams, the author of many fine works including the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Series. On that day, all the hoopy froods carry a towel in [...

Blawg Review #213 pre-announcement

Posted on May 18, 2009
I’ll be hosting Blawg Review #213 one week from today, on May 25, 2009. I’m preannouncing the theme because I need your help. Yes, you there! My first Blawg Review #42 was in honor of Douglas Adams, one of my favorite authors who suffered a permanent existence failure in 2001...

Fan Generated Content on the Internet

Posted on February 21, 2009
Here are the slides from my presentation to the Chicago Bar Association’s Cyber Law and Data Privacy committee on February 17, 2009 entitled “Fan Generated Content on the Internet.” I talked about the Harry Potter Lexicon case, including the changes to the book which were made in order for it to be publishable...

Bits and Bytes

Posted on January 08, 2009
Welcome to 2009! Postings here have been light at the end of 2008 due to other considerations, such as work and sleep. Let’s see if 2009 brings the planned regular posting schedule. I’ve still been active online, just not here. You can follow me on Twitter at @cyberlaw...

What does ?search incident to arrest? mean today?

Posted on October 30, 2008
A good article over at the Wall Street Journal on the recent controversy over warrantless searches of laptops was pointed out to me by Venkat Balasubramani. Thanks, Venkat! The article is worth reading as it discusses the recent cases involving searches of electronic items at the border (based upon a “reasonable suspicion” test), and contrasts [...

10 years of the DMCA

Posted on October 28, 2008
It’s been 10 years today since President Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law. Wired has put together a nice retrospective, available here. They call it a misunderstood law that created the Internet commerce as we know it today...

McCain campaign finding unsympathetic ear from YouTube

Posted on October 15, 2008
The McCain campaign’s efforts to have YouTube deal with DMCA takedown notices directed to its commercials uploaded to the video sharing site differently from other content owners have been rebuffed. Recent commercials have featured clips taken from CBS News and other news sources, which the campaign argues is a fair use of the material...

Professor Lessig on copyright reform

Posted on October 13, 2008
Here’s a link to a great article by Professor Lessig on the need for copyright reform. Despite the article’s title, he’s really not defending piracy per se, but merely noting that the law criminalizes certain behaviors that he believes should instead be encouraged...

Guest on Lawyer 2 Lawyer Podcast: ?Privacy and Piracy: Viacom v. YouTube?

Posted on July 25, 2008
I was honored to be asked to participate on the excellent Lawyer 2 Lawyer podcast on the topic of the recent stipulation entered into between Viacom and YouTube (Google) over user data that the Judge in that case ordered to be turned over to Viacom. My fellow guest was Lauren Gelman, the Executive Director [...

Top level domain expansion coming in 2009

Posted on June 26, 2008
ICANN has today approved an expansion of the top level Internet domains from the familiar ones (.com, .net, .org, etc) to an unlimited array of choices. All that will be required is a showing of technical ability to manage the requested domains. Details are currently sketchy regarding the application process, it appears that [...

Quick Link - Protecting your identity online

Posted on June 16, 2008
Hat tip to BeSpacific for the link to this article posted at PC World by Rosemark Haworth entitled “A Guide to Protecting Your Identity Online.” Among the tips include: - Letting people within your networks search your profile in Facebook may not be such a good idea...

YouTomb: A Study of Copyright Infringement on YouTube

Posted on May 29, 2008
Be sure to check out YouTomb, a research project of MIT Free Culture. It monitors YouTube for videos that are taken down pursuant to DMCA takedown notices. The site shows a screenshot of the video and information about the takedown. You can sort by the entity providing the notice, for example you [...

The future of DRM

Posted on May 16, 2008
Over lunch today, I had a nice chat with a fellow lawyer about digital rights management (DRM), among other topics. Then, later on, I came across this nice article from The Guardian entitled “How Apple is Changing DRM.” DRM is a way for copyright owners to get around the rights the purchaser of a copy [...

Jonathan Zittrain?s new book is out

Posted on May 02, 2008
I am excitedly planning to read Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it. It’s out in a free Creative Commons licensed version, linked above, as well as one you can buy through places like Amazon. If you don’t recognize Jonathan’s name, you haven’t been following Internet legal issues [...

Interesting presentation on Cybercrime

Posted on April 23, 2008
Here’s a link to Jonathan Frieden’s post entitled “Defending a Criminal Case in a Cyber World” where he posts the outline of his recent talk on the subject. If you follow my blog regularly I’m sure this will be of interest to you.

Slides from Copyright presentation

Posted on April 08, 2008
Here are my slides from the presentation I gave on April 1, 2008 at the Chicago Bar Association as part of the Internet Intellectual Property Issues for Small Businesses seminar. My presentation is entitled “Copyright Issues for Small Businesses...

Is this the day the world changed?

Posted on March 21, 2008
The results of the FCC’s wireless spectrum auction are of particular interest to more than just people in the telecom industry, as it will significantly impact how people access the Internet for years to come. It’s no big surprise that Verizon is the big winner, but I especially enjoyed reading Susan Crawford’s analysis of the [...

Techshow 2008 - Day 2 - In Progress update

Posted on March 14, 2008
Since my last post, yesterday I attended the end of the Day 1 sessions and the evening Techshow After Dark event. Today, I attended sessions on e-discovery, disaster planning, using Internet-based collaboration tools, and computer forensics. The last one was fun, Craig Ball was looking for a volunteer for someone to give him [...

Techshow 2008 - In Progress report

Posted on March 13, 2008
The “Laptop Lanes” are finally in place here at Techshow 2008, so I am posting this later than planned. The highlight to me so far has been Marc Rotenberg of Epic’s keynote. Tom Mighell did such a good job with the fireside chat portion of the keynote that I only managed to think [...

Looking forward to Techshow 2008!

Posted on March 12, 2008
I’ll be heading over to the Hilton for ABA Techshow 2008 Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this week. I am looking forward to catching up with those I’ve met in previous years. If you will be there, please stop me and say hello! I also plan to post somewhat, at least once per [...

Article on just what is ?Intellectual Property?

Posted on March 07, 2008
Mike Masnick at Techdirt has written the latest in a series of posts which discuss the rationale and basis for what we think of as “Intellectual Property.” It’s a well written series, I’d recommend that you read it. I don’t agree with all he says, but it’s well reasoned...

Niro posts reward for blogger identity

Posted on January 29, 2008
Raymond Niro, principal of Chicago firm Niro Scavone Haller & Niro, has posted a $10,000.00 reward for the identity of the anonymous patent blogger, “Troll Tracker.” For a discussion of the issues, here’s a link to the ABA Journal article on the subject...

Blawg Review #144

Posted on January 28, 2008
Welcome to Blawg Review #144! This review draws its theme from the number, as did my prior reviews, #42 with its Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy theme, and #93 with my tribute to Steve Jackson Games and its Illuminati game. Well, this one proves once again how much of a geek I am [...

A special MLK Day Blawg Review

Posted on January 21, 2008
Public Defender Stuff has created a really special edition of Blawg Review, No. 143, in honor of Martin Luther King day. I urge you to check it out. As I am hosting Blawg Review #144 this next Monday, please get your submissions in early so they can be included...

A blogger dies in Iraq

Posted on January 07, 2008
Here’s a link to the last post, written before his death, that blogger Andrew Olmstead wanted published in the event he died while serving in Iraq. He posted at the site Obsidian Wings as G’Kar, a character from Babylon 5. His choice of that character resonates with me as a fan of the [...

Blawg Review Nominations

Posted on January 02, 2008
I’m flattered that some of my peers have chosen to honor my Blawg Review #93 (The Illumninati 2-disc special edition) as one of the best Blawg Reviews from 2007. I’m looking forward to hosting again myself on the 28th of January… I’d like to nominate my fellow Hosts as follows: #122 - David Gulbransen #130 (Southern Hemisphere) [...

So why is it difficult to properly legislate for Cyberspace?

Posted on November 28, 2007
Ryan Blitstein asks this question in a great article at the Mercury News, here is the link. To summarize, the difficulties include legislators who don’t understand the technology, as well as companies that fight good laws because the proposed law hurts their bottom line...

IPLAC High Tech Committee - 11/16/2007

Posted on November 06, 2007
The first of the IPLAC High Tech Committee’s lunchtime discussions will be held on November 16, 2007 at John Marshall Law School from 12-1:30. As the chair, I can say that I am really excited to have this come together. If you can join us, please do! The details on how to register [...

Quick Links

Posted on November 05, 2007
Here are a few short items of interest I’d like to pass along: 1) Conrad Jacoby has a great article on the electronic discovery of employee-owned computer equipment that was published at llrx. Here is a link. 2) If you’ve not already seen Michael Wesch’s video called Information R/evolution, check it out now...

Will hacked iPhones become iBricks?

Posted on September 19, 2007
Jacqui Cheng’s article at Ars Technica points out the dilemma facing consumers who want to hack their iPhones so they are not tied to Apple’s exclusive service provider in the USA, AT&T. While hacks are available, they are quasi-legal at best...

Video on National Security Letters

Posted on September 15, 2007
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee has put together a 26-minute video entitled “FBI Unbound: How National Security Letters Violate Our Privacy”, which can be viewed online or ordered on DVD.  It features interviews with Lisa Graves, Bruce Fein, and George Christian, who actually received one of these letters and can talk about it...

Symantec releases e-discovery solution

Posted on August 07, 2007
Symantec has announced a new e-discovery initiative by rolling out products that will assist in the collection of electronically stored information. Unfortunately, these appear to be only for users of its Enterprise Vault solution. Still, it’s a nice change...

Blawgworld 2007

Posted on July 30, 2007
I’m happy that my Blog was included in the 2007 edition of Blawgworld, published by Technolawyer.  Here’s a link to get your free copy.  Be sure to check out the other wonderful legal blogs that are linked through from there.

Detecting government spyware

Posted on July 19, 2007
Here’s an interesting article, written by Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, entitled “Will security firms detect policy spyware?” There are currently no rules that specifically require companies to comply with requests for government spyware to be installed on users’ machines...