Intellectual Property Law

The Singularity Law Podcast: Episode 1

Posted on September 29, 2008
This is a pilot for a new podcast on technology law that I’ll hopefully be recording each week along with Josh Kagan. In each episode we’ll cover some of the most interesting topics of the week, identify trends, discuss new legislation, analyze recent cases, and end with our favorite talking point of the week...

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Posted on September 24, 2008
?Network neutrality? is a highly charged issue amongst Internet lawyers, business executives, users and government officials. During the formative years of the Internet, the question of whether companies that provided Internet connectivity should treat all users and websites equally was not an issue...

We Need a Technology Policy for the 21st Century

Posted on September 17, 2008
We have gone through the first eight years of the 21st Century without a coherent federal technology policy. During that time, we have seen investment in research and development in real dollars decline and the federal government basically ignore the value of technology to the U...

International IT Law Summer in London Program

Posted on August 25, 2008
In the summer of 2009, Southwestern Law School (Los Angeles) will offer a new summer abroad program in London which will focus on international information technology (IT) law. The program will allow students to study cutting-edge legal issues with an exceptional international faculty...

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Prove Our Case? . . . We Don?t Need to Prove Our Stinkin? Case!! Just Fork Over the Money.

Posted on June 22, 2008
In a recent filing with a federal court in Minnesota, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) asserts that it should be permitted to recover up to $150,000 per copyrighted movie allegedly traded online using P2P file sharing without having to prove that anyone actually made a copy of that movie...

How Not to Win Friends (and Influence People)

Posted on June 17, 2008
The blogosphere has been afire about actions taken by Associated Press (AP) against the Drudge Retort last week. According to reports, AP sent a series of DMCA take down notices to the Drudge Retort demanding that the blog remove six items (including one user comment) that quoted AP headlines or snippets of content from AP [...

IT Law Wiki Reaches 3,000 Articles

Posted on May 31, 2008
We have reached another milestone on the development of the IT Law Wiki. It has passed 3,000 articles and is moving toward 4,000. We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the wiki thus far, and would like to encourage others to do so as well...

Generalist vs. Specialist

Posted on May 14, 2008
Law students (and virtually every other kind of student) is under enormous pressure to specialize sooner and sooner. While I specialized early when I was in college, today I see doing so as an enormous error. Law students need to know a lot about a lot of different areas, not just of law, but history, [...

Using Twitter for Legal Updates

Posted on May 12, 2008
Twitter.com is a service that lets people send short messages (140 characters or less) (called “tweets”) to those who decide to “follow” them, and to receive short messages from those they choose to follow. While Twitter.com is used both for social networking and for business communications, it can also be an effective way to get [...

Roommates.com Decision: A Start of a Judicial Trend to ?Rein in? the Web?

Posted on April 21, 2008
The Ninth Circuit recently published its en banc decision in Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com LLC, 2008 WL 879293 (9th Cir. April 3, 2008). I do not intend to comment on the merits of the decision, which has been analyzed in depth here and here and here, but I want to [...

Appropriate Technology/Banning Internet Access in Class

Posted on April 14, 2008
When I meet people and tell them I specialize in technology law, they often assume that I must be an earlier adopter of every new geewhiz tech gadget that comes out. But I’m not. I believe in what I refer to as “appropriate technology,” that is, getting the technology you need and what is appropriate [...

IT Law Wiki Reaches a Milestone

Posted on March 27, 2008
The IT Law Wiki, launched last October, has reached 2,500 articles. While that sounds like a decent amount of material, it has barely scratched the surface of IT Law. I estimate that it needs 25,000 articles (10X the current number) before it will be comprehensive — by anyone’s definition of that word...

Judges and the KISS Principle

Posted on March 27, 2008
Those lawyers who live and breathe a specialty, like IT Law, often forget that not everyone speaks their language, including judges. That isn?t to say that judges aren?t smart. Many are brilliant. But they are generalists, who hear cases on a wide variety of legal issues involving a dizzying array of businesses...

London Here We Come!

Posted on February 27, 2008
After a year of planning, and encountering a few “bumps” along the way, I am pleased to announce that my law school, Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles, will begin a summer abroad program in International Information Technology Law in London in 2009...

Federal Circuit to Revisit Business Method Patents

Posted on February 27, 2008
In 1998 the Federal Circuit decided in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), that there was nothing in patent law that prevented business methods from being patented, as long as they met all of the requirements for patentability...

Internet Vulnerability - Part 2

Posted on February 27, 2008
In my last post, I noted that the Internet is incredibly vulnerable to outages at various points where there is little or no redundancy. A recent event seems to indicate that global Internet vulnerability is more widespread than I thought. According to news reports, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told Internet service providers within the country [...

The World is Flat, and More Vulnerable Than Ever

Posted on February 02, 2008
Two underwater telephone cables were apparently cut by a ship’s anchor near the port of Alexandria in Egypt on January 30th. According to published reports, Egypt has suffered disruption of 70% of its nationwide Internet network, while India has suffered a 60% disruption...

Hollywood and Network Neutrality

Posted on January 15, 2008
I was interested in an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times shortly before Christmas. It indicated that some of the major writers were meeting with venture capitalists to see of they could start their own production companies to create entertainment products specifically for the Internet...

Wiki Up!

Posted on October 11, 2007
I am pleased to announce that a new wiki dedicated to Information Technology Law has recently been launched. It is being hosted by the folks that operate Wikipedia and numerous other wikis, and that means that if you are familiar with Wikipedia, the ITLaw wiki will look familiar and operates in exactly the same way...

Upcoming Article on the FTC and Data Security Breaches

Posted on September 18, 2007
When it rains it pours! Over the summer I completed another law review article, which will appear in Volume 60, Issue 1 of the Administrative Law Review (Winter 2008), published by American University’s Washington College of Law. The title of the article is “The FTC, the Unfairness Doctrine and Data Security Breach Litigation: Has the Commission [...

Upcoming Article on Tort Liability for Insecure Software

Posted on September 18, 2007
A law review article I recently finished titled “Tort Liability for Vendors of Insecure Software: Has the Time Finally Come?” has been accepted for publication in Volume 67, Issue 2 of the Maryland Law Review (Winter 2008). The current draft of the article is now available for downloading here...

Victims of Data Security Breaches Left High and Dry

Posted on September 18, 2007
As the number of data security breaches continues to increase, and the number of persons who have their personal information exposed reach over 100 million, you would think these victims would have some remedy for the time and effort they have to go through to get their lives back in order...

Fair Use Has Value

Posted on September 18, 2007
For many years (probably since fair use began), copyright owners have viewed fair use as some sort of government sponsored piracy of their creative efforts. But since a copyright has never been viewed as a monopoly, and the rights granted are constrained by the constitutional grant, fair use has always been viewed as part [...

Record Companies Seek to Offset Losses by Increasing Control Over Artists

Posted on August 16, 2007
A recent story on News.com indicates that record companies are investing in merchandising, artist management, touring and other companies to boost their slumping revenues from CD sales. Universal Music and Warner Music Group have announced investments in companies specializing in artist management and Web networking...

History of Computer/IT Law (2001-20??)

Posted on July 18, 2007
Fifth Epoch (2001-20??) The dot com bust had an enormous impact on the computer industry, as well as those lawyers who serviced that industry. Funding for start-ups disappeared, initial public offerings dried up, and a large percentage of the Internet industry found itself struggling to survive...

History of Computer/IT Law (1993-2001)

Posted on July 18, 2007
Fourth Epoch (1993-2001) By the early 1990s, the Internet was old-hat to computer professionals, but virtually unknown to the general public. The system began in 1969 as the ARPANet. It was ?designed to enable computers operated by the military, defense contractors, and universities conducting defense-related research to communicate with one another by redundant channels [...

History of Computer/IT Law (1982-1993)

Posted on July 18, 2007
Third Epoch (1982-1993) Toward the end of the 1970s, advances in semiconductor technology permitted the development of the first inexpensive, relatively small computers ? ushering in the personal computer era. Most of the early companies have been long forgotten ? such companies as IMSAI, Cromemco and Osborne...