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Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold

By wt

One of the greatest tragedies in the world is seeing a professor leave Berkeley to teach at Stanford.

It's like saying, "Yeah, I liked Berkeley enough to teach there and become a part of the community. But now I choose to [expletive] on it and betray the school for personal interest."

A few years ago Mark Lemley, at the time an Intellectual Property professor, made this exact metaphorical statement when he left BerkeleyLaw for Stanford.

He did so at a very inopportune time, just as Boalt was struggling to keep its IP program tops in the country, and was losing steam in the U.S. News rankings, which are irrelevant but incredibly important.

Now, Lemley also works for the famed litigation boutique Keker & Van Nest.

And karma, as they say, is a bitch. Somehow, he got stuck working on a patents case for the adult film industry. And the specific patent relates to -- and I couldn't make this up -- "teledildonics."

Mr. Rosenberg then took apart a vibrating mouse that Immersion had developed for and sold in the retail market, pulled out its chip and motor, and explained to me that these two items could be put into almost any form factor, including a teledildonic device.

[Speechless]

Lemley tried to get off the case, but his client wouldn't let him off the hook. Now, maybe that's not as good a punishment as a Berkeley-to-Stanford switcher deserves. But it's a nice start.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on May 03, 2008 (boomark / email).