Legal Commentary

Socio-Economic Data and Demographics in the USA by Country, State, County and Neighborhood : Education : Occupation : Income : Housing : Religion

Posted on August 18, 2009
The United States has always been a nation of immigrants and their progeny, and this is particularly true in the current era, although the current recession may be slowing immigration for the time being. People go where opportunity knocks.In better days, before the current recession and the discussion about "natural born" citizens, one used to talk about 1st-Generation Americans as opposed to e...

World Bank Group issues Business Rankings relating to the Ease of Doing Business in Any Country : Startups, Taxes, Property, Contracts

Posted on August 14, 2009
How conducive in any country is the regulatory environment for starting a business and for doing business? How about taxes, property, and contracts?The World Bank Group gives us a guide to answer such questions through their newly released Doing Business Economy Rankings, where, for example, the United States ranks 3rd overall in the world and Germany 25th...

NCAA College Football Soon Begins : Husker Football and Nebraskans in New York : Follow the Big Red Cornhuskers at the Irish Rogue in New York City

Posted on August 14, 2009
The upcoming 2009 college football season is nearly upon us ....A discussion comment by Marsha Lee of The Official University of Nebraska-Lincoln Alumni Association Group at LinkedIn points to the Irish Rogue (see Shecky's NYC Nightlife Review) as the Husker meeting place in New York City to watch Husker football games this year :"Nebraskans in New York...

The United States Lags Far Behind Many World Countries in Medical Care : It is a Disgrace : A National Health Care System Should Be Inevitable

Posted on August 13, 2009
We posted previously about this topic at LawPundit but add a bit more here, as we just received an email from David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to the President of the United States, about the new White House Reality Check on Health Insurance Reform. Check it out...

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Google Books and Copyright Law : New Feature Creates Word Clouds for Published Materials : The Example of Stars Stones and Scholars by Andis Kaulins

Posted on August 11, 2009
Words. Words. Words.Google Books has a special page for Legal Analysis relating to Google Books and copyright law.Our photo shows the sculpture "The Word" at Groote Markt, the marketplace in Sint-Niklaas, capital of Waasland, Flanders, Belgium,the largest such marketplace in the country:Google Books is a wonderful information resource which can assist greatly in determining whether to buy a book or not...

Standardize Electric Car Batteries so that Drivers can quickly exchange Battery Units at Charging Stations rather than charge a Car's Own Batteries

Posted on August 10, 2009
Are we missing something?The main problem with electric cars is the rather ridiculous state of affairs that each car has its "own" set of batteries which have to be recharged at charging stations over a considerable period of time, which greatly limits the mobility of electric cars - and greatly impedes their sale...

Day Pitney Unwisely Launches the Dysphemism "Summer Apprentice" for On-The-Job Legal Training to Replace the Euphemistic "Summer Associate"

Posted on August 10, 2009
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and that proverb might be applied in principle to a well-meaning press release issued by the law firm Day Pitney announcing their launch of a "summer apprentice program" to replace the firm's previous "summer associate program" (hat tip to Debra Cassens Weiss at the ABA Journal)...

Law Firms as "Attractive" Investments under the UK 2007 Legal Services Act : Private Equity Funds Consider Investing in BigLaw Starting 2011

Posted on August 05, 2009
The mass of law firm layoffs in the current recession, putting profits before principles, indicates that the practice of law as a profession in the modern era has become more and more a typical "business" and is less and less a noble legal profession conforming to the faulty image of professionally ethical attorneys nostalgically portrayed by the monopolistic bar associations...

Undergoing MyBlogLog Blog Ownership Verification Procedure

Posted on August 04, 2009
Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

The Potential Economic Impact of Weather and Climate on the Example of El Niño which is Back in Force for 2009 and 2010

Posted on August 04, 2009
Global warming is one thing but the cyclical El Niño is another.Michael McCarthy, environment editor at the Independent - via Reddit - informs us that a new El Niño is developing - the second strongest El Niño on record, which means global economic impacts for the world based on weather implications in the coming 2009-2010 period...

Auto Clunker Plan Update : Car Allowance Rebate System to be Extended by $2 Billion as House Passes Emergency Funding : Senate Approval Pending

Posted on July 31, 2009
Matthew L. Wald reports at the New York Times that House Votes for $2 Billion Fund to Extend 'Clunker' Plan.

What Goes on Here? Cash for Clunkers Auto Rebate Program Runs Out of Money While Bankdog Millionaires Stuff their Pockets with Bailout Money

Posted on July 31, 2009
Slumdog Millionaire - the rags to riches story of a Mumbai slum child - won eight Oscars at the 81st Annual Academy Awards in 2009, including best film of the year.Based on recent reports about billions of dollars in bailout money paid out as "bonuses" by banks to their employees in spite of the financial crisis which many of the bonus recipients surely helped to create, we suggest a "rich to richer" U...

Is Skype to be Joltid by Kazaa Developers? Was the $2.6 Billion eBay Purchase of Internet Telephony made without the underlying P2P Software ?

Posted on July 31, 2009
Loz Blain at Gizmag.com covers the strange dispute between Skype and Joltid under the headline: Licensing issues threaten to shut Skype down for good:"When eBay bought Skype from Joltid in 2005, the whopping US$2.6 billion price tag didn't include the Global Index peer-to-peer software that the world's biggest Internet Telephony system is based on...

Willful Unauthorized File Sharing (Downloading & Distribution) of Music is Copyright Infringement : Fair Use is NOT a Defense for Online Piracy

Posted on July 30, 2009
In the landmark Tenenbaum file sharing case, liberal U.S. Federal Judge Nancy Gertner of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, a Clinton appointee who is certainly one of the more modern of today's judges as a blogging federal judge - see also Slate and Sentencing Law and Policy) - whose legal career is marked by devotion to women, minorities, and the poor - has nevertheless ruled in favor of intellectual property rights that unauthorized music file downloading and distribution is NOT a "fair use" exception under the copyright laws...

Associated Press (AP, A.P.) to Require Licensing Agreements for News and Headlines : Thomson Reuters & OpenCalais New Content Economy

Posted on July 24, 2009
We posted previously at LawPundit about the Commercial Use of Newspaper Headlines Without Permission [as] Copyright Infringement in Japan. There is little doubt under the world's copyright laws that the same standard applies in other countries as well...

Judge Posner Stands Corrected at LawPundit for Using Faulty Reasoning Regarding the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009

Posted on July 23, 2009
Via Debra Cassens Weiss at the ABA Journal in Posner Questions Behavioral Economists and Proposed Credit Regulator we go to federal appeals judge Richard Posner and his WSJ editorial Treating Financial Consumers as Consenting Adults in which he criticizes a "paternalistic" Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 asking:"Is the choice among such alternatives really beyond the cognitive competence of the average home buyer? Is three minutes the limit of his attention span?"As you should know, Judge Posner, and as the 140 character limitation on messages at the popular Twitter microblogger amply prove, the answer to your question is "yes"...

For All Golfers - THIS IS A TIP - NOT A PAID AD : The Easily Affordable Digital Pro High Speed Golf Swing Analysis System

Posted on July 19, 2009
This is not a paid ad and we do not generally post email that we get as advertising but we got this in the mail today from Digital Pro Golf and looked at the specs and video samples online.What we liked was the ability to download the software and try it out for free, which we did, and we were able to use the program to evaluate an ...

Twitter and the Matter of Twitter-User Hijacked Names : What about the Names of Law Firms ?

Posted on July 19, 2009
Martha Neil at the ABA Journal Legal Technology Law News Now in her July 17, 2009 article asks"Did BigLaw Snag Twitter Usernames, or Were They ?Twitterjacked??"citing to a Law.com Legal Blog Watch posting by guest blogger Bruce Carton, "editor of Securities Docket, an online publication that tracks securities litigation and enforcement developments on a global basis...

New Podcast Series by Chorey, Taylor & Feil -- Common Legal Mistakes International Companies Make in Doing Business in the U.S. and How to Avoid Them

Posted on July 18, 2009
Via a posting at the German American ExecuNet group at Linkedin.com, attorney John Watkins of the law firm Chorey, Taylor & Feil in Atlanta (Buckhead), 3399 Peachtree Road, N.E., Suite 1700, The Lenox Building, Atlanta, Georgia 30326 alerts us to a podcast by John L...

The Guitars Have It : Customers Have Power : Is YouTube replacing the U.S. Supreme Court as the Last Resort for Customer Complaints?

Posted on July 18, 2009
It happened on the way to Nebraska....Power on this planet is sometimes misunderstood, especially in the legal field. The power of the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, is undisputed, but is generally visible only over longer periods of time and for a very small selection of legal issues and cases...

Twitter and Trademark Infringement : LawPundit Trademark Stolen at Twitter : LawPundit Responds by Registering Name EvanEvWilliams : Tit for Tat

Posted on July 15, 2009
We posted previously at LawPundit about the fact that the trademarked lawpundit name has been stolen at Twitter and that the management there is not responding to our complaints to have that name turned over to us - and this is part of established Twitter policy...

U.S. President Barack Obama on Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor : Judge Sotomayor as a Former Summer Associate at Paul Weiss et al.

Posted on July 14, 2009
We subscribe to the email messages of U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House. President Obama's most recent mailing concerns his nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.Judge Sotomayor was a summer associate in her younger days at the Law Pundit's former law firm, Paul, Weiss et al...

The Top 10 Most Frequently Accessed United States Supreme Court Decisions at LexisNexis : Significance and Case Commentaries

Posted on July 05, 2009
What United States Supreme Court decisions actually get the most action in legal circles?TechnoLawyer in its July 1, 2009 TechnoRelease® features the LexisNexis top 10 most frequently accessed United States Supreme Court decisions.The case citations below are from LexisOne, but the commentary is by LawPundit, linking to selected other websites which discuss these cases...

Genetic Patent Battle in the Biotech Sector Intensifies : The ABA Law Journal Magazine Features Law and Technology in "Wrangling Genes"

Posted on July 05, 2009
Brendan L. Smith at the ABA Journal online Law News Now in the section on Science & Technology Law has a posting titled Law Trails Behind as Disputes Over Genetic Patents Intensify.Read his full feature article in the ABA Journal magazine July 2009 issue at Wrangling Genes: As the law changes and new medical frontiers open, the dispute over genetic patents intensifies...

Andis Kaulins from the USA in Germany (LawPundit) is no near relation to Andis Kaulins from Canada in Wuxi China or to Andis Kaulins in Talsi Latvia

Posted on July 03, 2009
Most people think because of the rarity of the name Andis Kaulins that there can be only one person on Earth with that name - and this mistaken assumption has already led several times online to very unfortunate cases of mistaken identity and other difficulties...

The Trademarked LawPundit Name has been Stolen at Twitter which is Criminally Abetting Identity Theft : Here is our Complaint to Twitter

Posted on July 02, 2009
The legal community must begin coming down harder on identity theft and the online companies who abet identity theft and make their fortunes by knowingly abetting criminal behaviour, in the instant case, the website Twitter.com.Let us take a current real-world example involving the trademarked name of our own syndicated blog, LawPundit, whereby someone - not I, the trademark owner - has unlawfully taken the name lawpundit at Twitter...

2009 Am Law A-List of Top United States Law Firms Published : Compare to the 2009 Legal 500, the NLJ Survey and Other Rankings

Posted on June 30, 2009
American Lawyer magazine has published its 2009 Am Law A-List, which annually picks the top 20 law firms in the United States out of the Am Law top 200 list based on the factors of Revenue per Lawyer (RPL), Pro Bono Work, Associate Satisfaction and Diversity...

USA Environmental Legislation : American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 Passes U.S. House of Representatives and Heads to the U.S. Senate

Posted on June 28, 2009
The United States - which is far behind Europe in environmental legislation, and which is learning hard energy lessons in the automotive industry - is moving forward on clean energy, as the U.S. House of Representatives on June 26, 2009 passed Barack Obama's "Clean Energy Bill", (H...

Cybercrime and Cybersecurity : Cyberspace and Cyberwar : Russia for International Treaty : USA for Law Enforcement Cooperation : European Convention

Posted on June 28, 2009
Arms control for cyberspace?In a "futuristic" June 27, 2009 article at the New York Times titled U.S. and Russia Differ on a Treaty for Cyberspace, John Markoff and Andrew E. Kramer point to the growing threat of cyberwar:"Officials around the world recognize the need to deal with the growing threat of cyberwar...

Google Voice Phone Management System Arrives : Can also be Combined with Google's GOOG 411 to Find and Connect with Local Businesses by Phone for Free

Posted on June 28, 2009
Some readers are no doubt familiar with Google's free Goog 411 "find and connect to a business by phone service" - dial from any phone 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411):So how about the new Google Voice?Jeff Bertolucci at PC World in his June 26, 2009 article Hands On With Google Voice -This Is Really Cool reviews "Google's long-awaited Google Voice phone management service that finally became available this week to a lucky few" writing:"Google Voice provides a single phone number, such as 415-555-1212, for all your cell, home, and work numbers, and lets you manage your voice services online...

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