Legal Commentary

New EU Cookie Rules Come Into Force in the European Union Starting May 25, 2011

Posted on March 13, 2011
BBC News reports in New net rules set to make cookies crumble, that: "From 25 May, European laws dictate that 'explicit consent' must be gathered from web users who are being tracked via text files called 'cookies'.... The changes are demanded by the European e-Privacy directive which comes into force in the UK in late May...

The Lincoln Lawyer Panned at The Guardian Under the Motto that Law and the Courts Are Not a Good Match for Movies and Cinema

Posted on March 12, 2011
John Patterson at The Guardian really goes after courtroom films in this one: Legal movies like The Lincoln Lawyer kill cinema and ruin directors

From Bar to Par: Law and Golf (the game): Inventions Patents Litigation Trademarks at Golf-Patents.com

Posted on March 11, 2011
Back in my younger days in Lincoln, Nebraska, the golf season always started at or around March 15 when the courses opened their doors, and I imagine in many parts of the country that hasn't changed much, as the golf season for most of us is just in the starting blocks, weather permitting (!)...

Flexible Patent Reform Law Sought by Legal Experts Testifying before a House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee

Posted on March 11, 2011
Josh Smith reports on the House Judiciary subcommittee probe of patent experts in Law Experts Call For Flexible Patent Legislation

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A Commitment to Legal Blogging is Necessary, According to Luigi Benetton Communications

Posted on March 11, 2011
Luigi Benetton Communications with a lawyer-like slogan of "clarity out of complexity" has a very useful post for blawgs and law bloggers at Running a legal blog takes commitment.I wish I had the time to implement some of his suggestions :-)

Auto-Renewals and Telecommunications: UK Ofcom to Ban ARCs (Automatically Renewable Contracts, Rollover Contracts) that Impose Leaving Penalties

Posted on March 11, 2011
Pinsent Masons Out-Law.com writes about Ofcom in the UK that: "Rollover contracts with leaving penalties to be banned"because they 1) increase consumer exposure to switching costs and, 2) lessen competition in the market. These kinds of auto-renewal contracts are one of our major pet peeves as they are the standard way to do business in telecommunications and a host of other service industries in our own domicile and negatively impact the competitiveness of markets...

Modernist Cuisine by Nathan Myhrvold : A Book Review at NYTimes.com by Michael Ruhlman on a Six-Volume Masterwork by a Multimillionaire Tech Visionary

Posted on March 10, 2011
The New York Times Book Review by Michael Ruhlman writes: "DESCENDING this week on the culinary scene like a meteor, ?Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking? is the self-published six-volume masterwork from a team led by Nathan Myhrvold, the multimillionaire tech visionary who, as a friend of mine said, ?decided to play Renaissance doge with food...

Easy Class List at Stanford for Athletes: Welcome to the Real World

Posted on March 10, 2011
I am writing here as a Stanford alum, so I do admit to a bit of bias.... Report: 'Easy' class list at Stanford! - Pac-10 Blog - ESPN I think what amazes me about this story is that people get all worked up about something that has been going on at probably every university in the country for years in one way or another -- athletes are informed about or inform themselves one way or the other about classes to take just like all other students do...

Privacy and Social Media in a World where Sharing Information on Social Media Networks is the Dominant Internet Activity

Posted on March 10, 2011
Social media is a revolutionary change. "Sharing information through social media has become the dominant way Internet users spend their time. The feelings consumers have about privacy itself have changed...."Read the whole story by Bob Sullivan, MSNBC Technology Correspondent, Security, in Social media polarizes our privacy concerns.

Social Media Pioneers at Global Neighbourhoods

Posted on March 10, 2011
Shel Israel at Global Neighbourhoods writes at SM Pioneers: Justin Hall, the 1st blogger: "[NOTE: Formerly, the SM Global Report, this column has interviewed people all over the world who have extended social media in interesting or useful directions...

Labor Union Debate in Iowa Reminds of Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842) and the Legalization of Labor Unions

Posted on March 10, 2011
Following short-sighted short-term goals and thereby to damage long-standing long-term rights has always been a bad strategy, and the State of Iowa in the United States is right in the middle of that scenario. As Jason Clayworth writes at the Des Moines Register Staff Blogs: "House File 525, the bill being debated, would allow public employees to act as ?free agents? to sidestep union representation...

Lawyers and Speaking Suggestions from The Velvet Hammer

Posted on March 10, 2011
Lawyer tips: how to avoid boring your seminar audience : The Velvet Hammer : Karen Koehler: Seattle Personal Injury LawyerThe suggestions there are quite good, not just for lawyers or seminar audiences, but for speaking generally. Some years ago, when I did 4-hour stints lecturing on Anglo-American Law to 200 or so students in gigantic lecture halls at the University of Trier Law School in their FFA program, I used to "prowl the stage", just as Koehler writes, doing a jurisprudential Mick Jagger...

Viewing Documents in Google Docs with http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=

Posted on March 10, 2011
One merely takes the URL http://docs.google.com/viewer?url= AND THEN ADDS TO THAT the URL of the document to be viewed. Here is an example of viewing a document in Google Docs that I had on my hard disk as both a .pdf and .doc file and which I then uploaded by FTP to my lawpundit...

Use Google Docs for Collaboration

Posted on March 10, 2011
Ellis Hamburger with a March 10, 2011 article on How To Use Google Docs

View All Kinds of Files Online is 1 of 10 Awesome Google Tricks from Keir Thomas at PCWorld, March, 2011

Posted on March 10, 2011
USEFUL!10 Awesome Google Tricks You Missed - PCWorld Business CenterI had been looking for ways to display documents online and the solution found here fits my needs beautifully.Trick 1 of the 10 is: View All Kinds of Files Online

European Union (EU) Not Giving Up on Pan-European Patent Court as European Commission Moves Forward with Legislation Plans In Spite of Legal Barriers

Posted on March 10, 2011
As reported on March 10, 2011 by Deutsche Welle at EU member states agree on common patent laws, Italy and Spain sit out the European Commission is not giving up on a "European and Community Patent Court", a planned pan-European court which just two days ago was strongly negated by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as impinging on national courts, as we reported at LawPundit...

European Court of Justice (ECJ) Delivers a Strong "No" to a Pan-European Patent Court as Breaching EU Framework and Impinging on National Courts

Posted on March 10, 2011
Simon Petersen at LegalWeek.com has the story at: ECJ warns pan-European patent court would breach EU framework, writing: "Long-mooted plans for a pan-European patent court have suffered another setback after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) this week stated that such a policy would conflict with the EU's constitution...

The "America Invents Act" S. 23 Passed by U.S. Senate 95-5 and Now Goes to the House

Posted on March 10, 2011
Given its overwhelming 95-5 passage in the U.S. Senate, (see Patent Reform Passes Major Senate Hurdle at the Patents Post Grant Blog), one might think it to be likely that the Patent Reform Act S.23 would have a good chance to get through the House of Representatives, but Edward Wyatt at the New York Times in Senate Passes Bill to Change Patent System and Pricing says it isn't so, and that it is clear that the House will have its own version of the legislation needed...

Lawyers Media & Public: Law and Journalism Intersect at the NYU Law School Blog "Legal As She is Spoke" (really)

Posted on March 09, 2011
Legal as She is Spoke? It is worth looking at that blog just to find out how they got that moniker. I got this press release in the mail and thought I would pass it on to those who might be interested, as law and journalism are a powerful "intersection": Legal As She Is Spoke: New Blog from New York Law School Students Covering the Intersection of Law and Journalism New York, NY (March 8, 2011)?Students and faculty affiliated with the Program in Law and Journalism (PLJ) at New York Law School have launched a blog, Legal As She Is Spoke (LASIS), featuring dynamic coverage on the latest legal stories in the news, with a focus on accuracy in reporting on the law...

Syllabic Grid of Ancient Scripts : Luvian MinAegCon Syllabic Grid Conclusion and Concluding Remarks

Posted on March 07, 2011
More than 30 years ago, I deciphered the Phaistos Disk (also written Phaistos Disc) as a mathematical problem of parallel lines and that decipherment stands up to the MinAegCon + Luvian syllabic grid that I have just finished publishing. There are some minor corrections to be made there by me in the future since I did have to move a few of the signs around based upon that MinAegCon syllabic grid, but by and large the decipherment of the Phaistos Disk as Ancient Mycenaean Greek and as an ancient version of Euclid's 5th postulate (its converse) on parallel lines remains intact...

British Royal Head Queen Elizabeth to Visit Irish Republic as First Monarch since 1911

Posted on March 05, 2011
For all of our Irish and Irish-background readers out there....BBC News reports that:Queen to make first state visit to Irish Republic

Google and Microsoft Battle Patent Troll GeoTag

Posted on March 05, 2011
Patent, patent, who's got the patent?LOL ("laughing out loud").We at LawPundit were among the first to alert the world to patent trolls, years ago, but no one really paid any attention. After all, in those days, what was a blog to most people? They were lucky to know the word internet...

UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) Regulates Company Communications on Social Networking Sites such as Facebook and Twitter as of March 1, 2011

Posted on March 05, 2011
Pinsent Masons LLP at Out-Law.com in Ad regulator oversees social networking and companies' own sites from today writes that as of March 1, 2011 "[C]ompanies' communication on social networking sites and their own websites will be subject to regulation by the UK advertising industry watchdog, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)...

Winemakers Unite to Oppose the Building of an Ugly and Unnecessary Bridge over the Moselle River in Germany's Famed Mosel Wine Region. But is it TOO LATE?

Posted on March 03, 2011
Plans for the Moselle Bridge: Winemakers Flex Muscles Before Upcoming State Election - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International. What chance does the environment have when politicians, regional political administrators and environment-blind engineers destroy the best landscapes of their own national heritage? Take the Moselle River Valley in the Mosel wine region of Germany as an example...

Drug Tourism and Vice Control in the EU Lead to Discriminatory Law and a Logically Flawed Legal Decision by the European Court of Justice ECJ

Posted on March 02, 2011
The control of human vices such as prostitution and drug abuse are major problems for legal systems because they often involve the border-line confrontation of legal bodies and law enforcement agencies with "normal" citizens whose behavior has run contrary to the law statutes in matters that often involve legal and moral principles about which there is a great deal of differing opinion in the populace...

U.S. Supreme Court Stumbles and Falls on its Head in Snyder v. Phelps 8-1 Decision Protecting Hateful Speech by Sham Religious Group Inflicting Injury on Normal Citizens

Posted on March 02, 2011
In an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued its decision in Snyder v. Phelps and said that hateful speech is OK in forums where it is inappropriate. Justice Alito in dissent, BRAVO! It is nice to see one man left on the Supreme Court defending the RIGHTS of normal, decent citizens...

The Furry Child: Cats Adore, Manipulate Women : Discovery News

Posted on February 28, 2011
Cats Adore, Manipulate Women : Discovery News Not quite about law, but are there any legal consequences of this knowledge?

Google Faces EU Anti-Trust Problems from Competitors Alleging Abuse of Dominant Market Position

Posted on February 27, 2011
Valentina Pop at EUobserver.com reports that Google facing second EU anti-trust case "for alleged abuse of its dominant market position." Google controls 80% of the European search engine market and is accused of favoring its own sites in search results...

Second-Hand Software Sales and Copyright Licensing and Infringement: Legal or Illegal: ECJ -- European Court of Justice -- to Decide based on Request from the German Federal Court of Justice -- Bundesgerichtshof

Posted on February 27, 2011
OUT-LAW News from Pinsent Masons LLP reports that: ECJ asked to rule on re-sale of software licences The German Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice, the highest court in Germany for non-constitutional questions) has requested the highest court in the European Union, the ECJ (European Court of Justice) to clarify the legality of the sale of second-hand software in a case involving second-hand Oracle software sold online by third parties.

Legal Documents and Typography for Lawyers

Posted on February 25, 2011
Typography for Lawyers initially looks like just a website to advertise a superb typography book for law, but if you click on the links to further online pages at that website, you may find a wealth of useful information that can be applied to legal documents.

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