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Legal Commentary

LawPundit

Covers Constitutional and Intellectual Property (copyrights, patents, trademarks) Law, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Internet and New Media, and business-related legal issues from a American and European perspective. Sports (especially college football), Lifestyle (especially the wine business), and Ancient History (especially Legal History)-- all from a broadly defined legal and evidentiary point of view-- round out the picture.
By Andis Kaulins

Post Frequency: 16.6/day

Last Entry: June 15, 2013 at 17:20:01

Stanford Wins 19th Straight Directors' Cup as the Nation's Best Overall Collegiate Athletics Program

Posted on June 15, 2013
Stanford will be the winner again, but it was close this athletic season.... Eddie Timanus of USA TODAY Sports has the story at Directors' Cup will go to familiar homes in 2013 which follows up on our previous posting. The Directors' Cup website writes as follows (we added the links): "The Learfield Sports Directors' Cup is awarded annually to the nation's best overall collegiate athletics program...

Human Genes Are Not Patentable: U.S. Supreme Court Rules Unanimously

Posted on June 13, 2013
In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Thomas, the United States Supreme Court has held that human genes are not patentable. Adam Liptak has the story at the New York Times in Supreme Court Rules Human Genes May Not Be Patented See also Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog in Opinion recap: No patent on natural gene work See Max Mallory at SCOTUSblog on Round-up of news on today's opinions LawPundit has been right all along on this case...

College Sports: Stanford University Cardinal Magic in NCAA Athletic Championships Continues

Posted on June 13, 2013
Stanford University is famed for its academics and for neighboring Silicon Valley, home of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and a myriad of high-tech firms that have changed the world, many of which can be viewed as Stanford spinoffs. "The Farm" is a magic place, and I hold that to be true, not only because I am an alumnus...

DNA Evidence, Maryland v. King, Search Warrants: Law and Order vs. Personal and Property Rights: Is a Minor Physical Intrusion for Identification a Search?

Posted on June 10, 2013
The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Maryland v. King, in an opinion written by Justice Kennedy, pits an unlikely majority of 5 Justices (Kennedy, Chief Justice Roberts, Breyer, Alito and Thomas) against an even more unlikely quartet consisting of the three ladies on court, viewed as liberals all, together with arch-conservative Constitutional originalist Justice Scalia...

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Patents: ITC Imposes Import Ban on Apple iPhone 4 and iPad 2 3G for Infringement of Samsung Patents

Posted on June 10, 2013
You live by the sword, you die by the sword. The Apple company has not listened to reason in its mad legal campaign against Samsung and other manufacturers such as HTC and is now reaping back some of the ugliness of what it itself has foolishly sown...

The Economics of Training (or) Why a Tiny Village in Germany's Black Forest Has Seven Michelin Stars

Posted on May 31, 2013
Does good food provide the missing key to good national economics? In this vein, Nicholas Kulish at the New York Times has a fascinating article on One Tiny German Town, Seven Big Michelin Stars. Why does the United States have just about as many Michelin 3-star restaurants as Germany, even though America has four times the population? Is there a lesson from the food industry here for the economy in general? In Germany, not just the food, but almost everything "works", not necessarily so in other places...

Receipts in Gmail Can be Found by Entering a Hidden Smart Label in the Gmail Search Box

Posted on May 31, 2013
For users of Gmail, Alan Henry at LifeHacker has a valuable tip and detailed discussion about a smart label search for receipts in your Gmail. See Find Receipts in Gmail with This Hidden Smart Label. The trick is to enter label:^smartlabel_receipt in the Google search box at the top of Gmail...

Krugman Wins (for Now) as German Chancellor Merkel's Government Switching to Stimulus instead of Austerity: Why Germany Dominates the European Economy

Posted on May 27, 2013
Cowboys on the Rhine? Make sure you read that article to find out why the American employee system of master-servant is inferior to the German system of master-apprentice, at least in Germany. I am not German, so I feel free to write this as my honest opinion...

Federal Transportation Preemption Limited by U.S. Supreme Court in Dan's City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey -- Statutory Interpretation Voiced by Justice Scalia in a Previous Dissent is Found Important by Justice Ginsburg and a Unanimous Court

Posted on May 16, 2013
Deepak Gupta at SCOTUSblog provides an analysis of the unanimous Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Ginsburg in Dan's City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey, a decision which relies in part on statutory interpretation voiced by Justice Scalia in a previous dissent...

#Hashtags and #hashtag Ownership: Intellectual Property and Company Trademarks vs. Descriptive #hashtags

Posted on May 15, 2013
Via LexisNexis the blog Business Law Post has a nice piece on Who Owns #Hashtags? An interesting intellectual property question is posed by Twitter #Hashtags as regards #hashtag ownership, which can arguably be viewed from the standpoint of company #trademarks ( probably #hashtagprotectable ) and/or descriptive #hashtags ( probably #hashtagunprotectable )...

Self-Replicating Products: In Bowman v. Monsanto Co. the U.S. Supreme Court Limits the Doctrine of Patent Exhaustion by Prohibiting Purchasers from Making and Marketing Replicas of the Patented Invention

Posted on May 14, 2013
As we previously predicted at LawPundit on the basis of the oral arguments to the case, the U.S. Supreme Court decided unanimously in favor of the patent holder in Bowman v. Monsanto Co., holding as follows in an opinion by Justice Kagan: "Under the doctrine of patent exhaustion, the authorized sale of a patented article gives the purchaser, or any subsequent owner, a right to use or resell that article...

Austerity and The Chutzpah Caucus from Paul Krugman

Posted on May 06, 2013
See Paul Krugman at the New York Times on austerity and The Chutzpah Caucus at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/opinion/krugman-the-chutzpah-caucus.html?hp&_r=0

Criminal Law: Back to the Basics in the U.S. Supreme Court Case Metrish v. Lancaster: What is Mens Rea? and Who Defines It? What About Retroactive Denials of Rights?

Posted on April 26, 2013
Oral argument on Metrish v. Lancaster was just held, a Supreme Court case of substantial interest to criminal law circles, primarily involving the issue of mens rea, i.e. "intent" as a material element of crimes. See Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog in Argument recap: Who makes law? The case looks simple at first glance, but is in fact hard as a matter of law, involving the core concept of culpability, which is at the root of nearly all criminal laws -- asking who decides, and when, that culpability exists...

UEFA Champions League: Borussia Dortmund over Real Madrid 4-1 in their 1st Leg of Semi-Final

Posted on April 25, 2013
Sid Lowe has the story for The Guardian at Borussia Dortmund 4-1 Real Madrid | Champions League semi-final first leg match report. Robert Lewandowski scored all four of the Dortmund goals in matching the Bayern Munich 4-goal output in their 1st leg semifinal game against FC Barcelona...

Munich over Barcelona 4:0 in 1st Leg of Champions League Soccer Semifinal

Posted on April 24, 2013
Bayern Munich scored a sensationally decisive 4:0 win over FC Barcelona in the 1st leg of the Champions League semifinal, leaving Barcelona little chance via the 2nd leg of making it into the May 25 final at Wembley Stadium in London, though the 2nd game must still be played on the field, so no one should get overconfident...

Persistent Identifiers and Invasive Tracking via Flash Cookies viz. LSOs or Local Shared Objects (LSOs) are leading to Increased Litigation

Posted on April 19, 2013
Alycia N. Broz and Robert J. Krummen of Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease LLP report at Lexology on an increasing number of lawsuits being filed regarding an increasingly new threat to computer user privacy in: Flash Cookies Litigation: the next wave or a ?Flash? in the pan? Nothing useful has come out of the courts on this issue up to now...

New York Times Editorial Board Asks: Are Human Genes Patentable?

Posted on April 18, 2013
The New York Times Editorial Board asks: Are Human Genes Patentable?. As we noted in our previous posting at Patenting Human Genes: Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics: U.S. Supreme Court Oral Argument Indicates Natural Genes Will be Found Unpatentable as a Matter of Composition but Genes Worked by Human Ingenuity May Be Patentable as to Use the U...

Can One Really Patent A Gene?

Posted on April 17, 2013
Nice article at The Financialist by Carmel Melouney on Can You Really Patent A Gene?

Patenting Human Genes: Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics: U.S. Supreme Court Oral Argument Indicates Natural Genes Will be Found Unpatentable as a Matter of Composition but Genes Worked by Human Ingenuity May Be Patentable as to Use

Posted on April 15, 2013
Oral argument on U.S. Supreme Court case 12-398, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (see the transcript) took place today, Monday, April 15, 2013. Essentially, it appears to us that the ultimate decision of the Supreme Court Justices in this case could fall along the following line of decision-making: A natural human gene, i...

Successful Networking Principles: Spreading Awareness and Increasing Followers in Social Media

Posted on April 11, 2013
Sam Milbrath in #MyDash with Booooooom ~ Spreading Brand Awareness in Social Media - HootSuite Social Media Management shows how Jeff Hamada has picked up a following that accounts for 3 million page views per month -- in the arts! So what is his secret? Hamada's basic social media networking principles in the arts are surely applicable to many other fields and to many other ventures, also to social media networking in the legal profession...

United States Chamber of Commerce Tops Amicus ?All Stars" as the Pendulum Moves to the Right

Posted on April 06, 2013
Prevailing political and business opinion can be found reflected in even such things as amicus briefs filed at the U.S. Supreme Court. Adam Chandler has the story at SCOTUS Blog in Cert.-stage amicus ?all stars?: Where are they now? showing that the U...

Timekeeping Precedents to the Billable Hour: Time, Dates, Chronology and the World of Watches (or) What's in a Chronometer?

Posted on April 04, 2013
Day-to-day time and longer term dates, dating and chronology are the clocks for all that we humans do, including and especially the law, where "time" is billed in law practices and represents the monetary basis of the profession. We at LawPundit are always amazed that more people in the legal profession do not share our interest in prehistoric stargazing, ancient astronomy and megalithic cultures, all of which involved man's time-keeping long ago -- and all of which serve as timekeepers' precedents for what we call "time" now...

Patents, The High Price of Pharmaceutical Drugs and Low-Cost "Generics" in Poor Countries

Posted on April 02, 2013
Pharmaceutical drugs in the context of patents and low cost generics in poor countries is discussed in detail by Gardiner Harris and Katie Thomas at the New York Times in Top Court in India Rejects Novartis Drug Patent. When the "real pill" of a leukemia drug can cost $70000 per year as opposed to a "generic" copy that costs only $2500 annually, then the battle lines are well drawn for the discussion of SENSIBLE policy in this field...

Weaknesses of the Patent System and the Actavis Case at the U.S. Supreme Court

Posted on April 02, 2013
Make sure you read the posting Actavis Case Shows Weak Patents Are System-Wide by David Balto at Patent Progress, which writes inter alia as follows: "The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) grants 78% of all original patent applications as opposed to 61% granted by Japan and 55% granted by the European Union...

Creswell Crags Robin Hood Cave Ochre Horse Rib Bone Carving Decipherment Update 2.0

Posted on April 01, 2013
This posting is Update 2.0 to my previously posted original decipherment on this topic as also to Update 1 of the Creswell Crags "Ochre Horse" rib bone carving decipherment. This update provides an image of the details of the rib bone, all except for the Winter stars on the top left of the rib bone, which are already included in the previous posting, and shows that large darkened spots on the rib bone are to some degree intentional carved "placements" marking stars of the heavens, e...

Ochre Horse Rib Bone Carving of Creswell Crags Decipherment Update 1.0

Posted on April 01, 2013
This posting is Update 1.0 to my previously posted decipherment of the Creswell Crags "Ochre Horse" rib bone carving, showing that the calendric astronomy of stars is continued on the rib bone if it is turned 180 degrees, thus covering all the heavens and all the seasons and marking divisions of the heavens that would suggest a lunar and solar mesh...

Happy Easter! The British Museum Exhibition on Ice Age Art and Arrival of the Modern Mind Continues until May 26 and the Creswell Crags Robin Hood Cave Ochre Horse Could Lay Some Claim to Fame

Posted on March 30, 2013
Happy Easter! In honor of the day of resurrection celebrated today by the Christian faith, a general theme of hope and renewal that is the backbone of religious life for many religions and denominations, I would like to share with you my recent research success in bringing back to life (via decipherment) the ancient message found on the Creswell Crags "Ochre Horse" rib bone carving...

The 10th Justice Anthony Lewis and the U.S. Supreme Court at The New Yorker as Marriage Cases Meet

Posted on March 29, 2013
Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker reports on the passing of The Tenth Justice (Anthony Lewis, R.I.P.), whose life, work and spouse, now widow, Margaret H. Marshall, coincidentally have a special significance for the "marriage cases" currently under review at the U...

What's in a Word: "Ungoogleable" as a Trademark Violation? And What About "Retina"?

Posted on March 27, 2013
Google gets ungoogleable off Sweden's new word list is the title of an article by Sean Fanning at BBC News that goes to the heart of word "trademarks" as law. After all, what's in a word? A similar question is whether a basic language word like "retina" belongs to us or to some profit-gouging commercial enterprise that steals some of our most basic and popular common words for their own selfish purposes...

Will Google Ultimately Wind Up as a Public Utility? Krugman to the Fore at NYTimes.com

Posted on March 25, 2013
Paul Krugman at the NYTimes.com discusses The Economics of Evil Google. We can not quite agree with Krugman on all points, although we have had our moments of ire with Google practices, but we gladly use Google's services and were among the first to recognize that their search engine was the best out there and still is...