Legal Commentary

Update of the Paul, Weiss Reference Guide to U.S., European (EU) & Global Legislative and Regulatory Measures to Deal with the Financial Credit Crisis

Posted on May 14, 2009
Paul, Weiss has just issued a comprehensive updated edition (May 6, 2009) of A Reference Guide to the Financial Crisis Rescue Efforts, such as are being taken via legislative and regulatory measures in the United States, Europe (European Union, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, The Netherlands, & Other European Countries) and also on a Coordinated Global basis...

France Defies European Union and Passes Controversial Anti-Piracy Three Strikes and You're Out Creation and Internet Law Against Illegal File-Sharing

Posted on May 12, 2009
The French National Assembly of the Fifth French Republic, the lower legislative chamber in the bicameral Parliament of France, has passed the "three strikes and you're out" anti-piracy "Creation and Internet Law", also called the "Three-Strikes Law" against illegal file-sharing and it is expected that the upper house, the French Senate, will also pass the law tomorrow...

Nanotechnology Patent Landscape in the UK 2009 : Nanotech Patents May be Declining

Posted on May 12, 2009
The Nanotechnology e-News Bulletin of April 30, 2009 in FREE REPORT: IPO produce UK Innovation Nanotechnology Patent Landscape Analysis 2009 refers to a free report (80 pdf pages) just issued on the nanotechnology patent landscape in the United Kingdom 2009:"The UK Intellectual Property Office has compiled a nanotechnology patent landscape for the UK...

Nanotechnology Growth and Nanotech Patents

Posted on May 12, 2009
At IPFrontline.com in Nanotechnology Patents and Challenges Raj Bawa, PhD writes to open his article that:"The time for nanotechnology has come and a classic technological revolution is unfolding. According to the National Science Foundation, by 2015 the annual global market for nano-related goods and services will top $1 trillion, making it one of the fastest growing industries in history...

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Andis Kaulins Hitting a 300-yard Drive : Golf-Club Cochem/Mosel Driving Range

Posted on May 12, 2009
Andis Kaulins Hitting a 300-yard Drive from Andis Kaulins on Vimeo.Andis Kaulins Hitting a 300-yard DriveWell, I nearly fell on my head on that one. I by no means have a perfect swing. But I won my club's men's championship in 2008 at age 61. It is the speed of the swing that makes for distance, determined mostly by a quick body turn at impact...

Montblanc Trademark for Stationery Goods Not Protected against Mont Blanc Tobacco Products in Latvia : Latvian Supreme Court Senate Decision : EU

Posted on May 11, 2009
Class 46 summarizes a note written at the World Trademark Review by Valentina Sergeyeva of Strahlberg & Partners in Riga, Latvia, relating to a decision of the Senate of the Latvian Supreme Court concerning a "Mont Blanc" tobacco and cigarette trademark registration application by the Polish company Zaklady Tytoniowe w Lubline SA, which was opposed by Montblanc-Simplo GmbH, now owned by the luxury goods conglomerate Richemont, as holders of the famous MontBlanc pen and stationery trademark...

Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands : Consumers are Angry with Governments, Institutions, and Economic Sectors but not Brands

Posted on May 11, 2009
The brandz.com BrandZ Top 100 ranking of brands by brand value was created by Millward Brown Optimor to identify the world's most valuable brands by dollar value. Their 2009 Press Release regarding this year's ranking is found below:"BRANDZ? TOP 100 MOST VALUABLE GLOBAL BRANDS NOW WORTH $2 TRILLIONGoogle is the world?s first $100 billion brand, number one for the third year runningNew York, New York, 29th April 2009 ? the fourth annual BrandZ? Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking published today by Millward Brown Optimor reveals that brands sustain their value, despite the tough economic environment...

The OFNetwork Update : An Interesting Site for People In or Retired From the U.S. Military Services

Posted on May 11, 2009
We have been alerted to a blog, The OFNetwork Update, which is especially suited for readers in or retired from the U.S. military services.The most recent posting, for example, relates to the news that the Obama Administration will not be increasing the fees for Tricare, which is "the health care program serving active duty service members, National Guard and Reserve members, retirees, their families, survivors and certain former spouses worldwide...

Happy Mother's Day with a Maywood Medley and Mother How Are You Today?

Posted on May 09, 2009
Mother How Are You Today? Medley by Maywood. Happy Mother's Day!See more of MayWood.

OECD Snapshot Country Statistical Profiles for 2009 are NOW Available for its 30 Member Countries plus Six Large Non-Member Economies

Posted on May 08, 2009
Do NOT believe everything you read in the media. To fully understand this world, it pays to look at hard facts available online.In this vein, one should now look at the Country Statistical Profiles for 2009 which have just become available from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)...

"The Legal Workshop" Aggregates and Digests Seven Law Reviews in a Unique New Collaboration to Reach Readers who are Shifting to Digital Media

Posted on May 07, 2009
(hat tip to Law@Stanford, May 2009 for bringing this topic to our attention)The digital era is slowly but surely eroding the importance of print-only law review tomes, so that it is probably inevitable to see that projects such as The Legal Workshop, newly conceived as a collaboration of seven law reviews (Cornell Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, New York University Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Stanford Law Review and University of Chicago Law Review), are now trying to reach readers by presenting digest versions of the often lengthy articles published in those seven law reviews...

A Visiting Card from Latvia : An Exceptional Video from the Latvian Institute : Via the Baltic Online Media Store (BOMS)

Posted on April 30, 2009
Seen originally at the Baltic Online Media Store (BOMS) - Make sure to turn on your sound.Latvijas viz?tkarte - Sounds Like LATVIA (2009) - Latvijas Instit?ts

Full Text of April 23, 2009 Press Release of the European Commission regarding Germany's Dodging of its CAP Disclosure Duty

Posted on April 29, 2009
Here is the full text - in English, French and German - of the April 23, 2009 Press Release of the European Commission regarding Germany's dodging of its disclosure duty to publish a list of all recipients of all forms of EU agricultural and rural development funds for each financial year...

European Union EU Common Agricultural Policy CAP Susbsidies also include Egregious Non-Farm Aid to Multinational Corporations

Posted on April 28, 2009
With reference to our previous posting on EU farm subsidies, we should point out that CAP payments made by the EU are not limited to farms and that European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) susbsidies also include Non-Farm Aid to multinational corporations, for example, in the form of notorious so-called export refunds, which involve the transfer of billions of euros to the bank accounts of large food-related companies...

European Union Farm Subsidies of $55 Billion are 43% of EU Budget : Germany Refuses to Name Aid Recipients on Data Protection Grounds

Posted on April 28, 2009
Feudalism is alive and well in Europe. It just has a very modern form of expression.The really big money in the European Union financial scheme of things changes hands feudally between the lowly taxpayers and vested agricultural interests, mostly big agribusiness and large landowners...

USA Drug Policy Flawed : 2.3 Million in Jail or Prison : Limits of the Criminal Sanction : Portugal Leads Way to Legal Reform & Drug Decriminalization

Posted on April 27, 2009
According to Eric E. Sterling, President of the non-profit Criminal Justice Policy Foundation and former counsel on anti-drug legislation to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, there are currently 2.3 million Americans in jails or prisons, many of them due to drug infractions:"We certainly need to imprison dangerous offenders - to protect us and to punish them...

U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Earned $32 Billion in 2008 : Bankruptcy Law and Policy : Law Prof Todd Zywicki on the Housing Crisis : Real Estate Sales

Posted on April 26, 2009
One must always recall that whenever money is being lost somewhere, it is being made elsewhere. The world's financial markets are in a constant seesaw battle for supremacy.It is thus no surprise to us that the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, in spite of having absorbed the assets - including the so-called "toxic assets" - of the "bankrupted" Bear Stearns and AIG companies, posted a $32 billion profit for the year 2008...

World Digital Library (WDL) Launched to Share Content of World's Libraries and Cultural Institutions

Posted on April 24, 2009
The World Digital Library (WDL) was launched on April 21, 2009.Staff writer Louise Fenner at America.gov provides the essential details of "a vast multilingual collection of manuscripts, maps, rare books, sound recordings, films, prints, photographs and other cultural and historical materials [which] can be viewed with the click of a computer mouse ? and this is only the beginning of an ambitious project to share the contents of the world?s libraries and cultural institutions...

Patent Baristas Comments Extensively on In Re Kubin : The Use of Conventional Techniques to Arrive at an Obvious Result Does Not Make an Invention

Posted on April 17, 2009
Stephen Albainy-Jenei at the blog Patent Baristas has an extensive posting on In re Kubin at Court: It?s Not An Invention If You Use Conventional Techniques To Make It, writing:"In In re Kubin (08-1184), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the US Patent and Trademark Office's Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences was correct to hold claims as unpatentably obvious when applicants use "conventional techniques" to make an invention...

Comparing Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Innovation in the United States and Europe : The Key Player is Venture Capital Financing and not Patents

Posted on April 17, 2009
It is often claimed that the liberal granting of patents is essential for the development of the pharmaceutical industry, especially modern biotechnology. The facts do not support that view.NGP's Mind the gap? writes:"Fast factsFor most of the past century, Europe has been leading the world in pharmaceutical innovation...

Federal Circuit affirms In re Kubin and puts sensible limits on Biotechnology Patents pursuant to the KSR obviousness standard, thus negating Deuel

Posted on April 07, 2009
We posted previously, extensively and definitey about the need to limit biotechnology patents at In re Kubin : Hitting the NAIL on the Head : Sequencing Poor Federal Circuit Court Decisions out of the Biotechnology Patent Genome via KSR and/or Bilski Reasoning...

The Odd Couple : President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany : A Partnership for European Unity ? The G20 Summit

Posted on April 02, 2009
Steven Erlanger and Nicholas Kulish have a very perspicacious March 30, 2009 article in the New York Times on the European economic situation at Sarkozy and Merkel Try to Shape European Unity, in which they refer to the "odd couple" of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who are currently leading a world in which we are surely seeing the inglorious end of what Erlanger and Kulish call "unbridled capitalism"...

Rethinking the Legal Profession at the New York Times : Adam Cohen Ponders the Logical Consequences of the Downturn

Posted on April 02, 2009
At the New York Times, Adam Cohen ponders the logical consequences of the financial crisis in big law in his article, With the Downturn, It?s Time to Rethink the Legal Profession:"The employment pains of the legal elite may not elicit a lot of sympathy in the broader context of the recession, but a lot of hard-working lawyers have been blindsided, including young associates who are suddenly finding themselves with six-figure student-loan debts and no source of income...

European Union (EU) Political Blog Aggregator at BloggingPortal.eu

Posted on April 02, 2009
The BloggingPortal.eu has instituted an interesting concept as it provides a website that aggregates European Union political blogs, 334 in number as of the date of this posting.Hat tip to GrahnLaw.

Building a Better Legal Profession (BBLP) : April 3-4 National Student Conference on Large Law Firm Reform : Layoffs, Recession : New Book on BigLaw

Posted on April 01, 2009
PRESS RELEASENATIONALLY RECOGNIZED STUDENT-RUN NONPROFIT RELEASES FIRST BOOK; ORGANIZES NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON REFORMING LARGE LAW FIRMS DURING ECONOMIC DOWNTURNStanford, CA, April 3, 2009 ? Building a Better Legal Profession (?BBLP?) ? the national student group whose efforts to reform large law firms ?shook up the legal world,? according to the New York Times ? has intensified its efforts in the wake of the economic downturn...

GM Chrysler and Obama : Automaker Debacle "a failure of leadership - from Washington to Detroit" : No More Bailouts without Restructuring

Posted on March 31, 2009
As reported by the BBC, no more bailouts for US carmakers GM and Chrysler if they do not restructure swiftly.President Obama has correctly called the American automaker debacle of GM and Chrysler "a failure of leadership from Washington to Detroit that led our auto companies to this point...

Scribd Copyrights Ken Follett and the Law Pundit, plus J.K. Rowling Nick Hornby and John Grisham, author of The Associate, a NY TIMES Bestseller

Posted on March 31, 2009
Scribd is becoming a force to be reckoned with on the Internet.At ScribdBlog in their posting What ever happened to Fact Checking?, the Scribd Team goes one on one with the Times of London on copyright issues relating to Scribd, involving such famous novelists as J...

AIG and Obama : "I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

Posted on March 29, 2009
Say what you want, but Obama is sharp. To the rather aggressive question by someone in the news media who is clearly not on Obama's side as to why it took Obama so long to express outrage at the AIG bonuses, Obama replied: "It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak"...

Wealth in America : Who Has the Money? : Wealth Income and Power in U.S. Society : Owners and Top-Level Managers Dominate : The Average American Loses

Posted on March 26, 2009
Who holds America's riches?Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz is the author of Who Rules America?, a book which he describes online as follows:"My book, Who Rules America?, presents detailed original information on how power and politics operate in the United States...

Hedge Fund Managers Fleece the Country and the World of Yet More Billions

Posted on March 25, 2009
Svea Herbst-Bayliss at Reuters reports in Top hedge fund earners take home billions that the country's top 25 hedge fund managers had their 3rd best year ever in 2008, gambling with other people's money, and collected a total of $11.6 billion for their services, which averages out to $464 million per manager per year...

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