Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Biggest IP cases of 2002

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stuff-that-matters dept.

scubacuda writes "Law.com's article, The Biggest IP Cases of 2002, has a nice summary of some of the intellectual property cases that have caught our attention this last year. Of particular interest to slashdotters: Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp. (regarding Arriba's visual search engine), Enzo Biochem Inc. v. Gen-Probe Inc. (regarding a gene patent being invalid because it did not meet the written description requirement), an Illinois federal court injunction against Aimster, United States v. Elcom Ltd a/k/a Elcomsoft Co. Ltd. , and Playboy Enterprises Inc. v. Welles (regarding Playmate of the Year, Terri Welles, using Playboy's marks and metatags on her website)."

4 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Eldred etc.; and a contest by MacAndrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, but just a couple. Some very industrious people compiled this list.

    Even were the US the longest, it would have to be so by a good margin to stick out. Again, I don't necessarily think the current terms are appropriate. Judge Posner has criticized them well, and noted that the main problem is that because it is difficult to make money off materials in the public domain, there was little opposition to the Sonny Bono Act.

  2. Re:Eldred etc.; and a contest by kedi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thanks for the list.
    It seems to me that the Eldred v. Ashcroft is not so much a challenge to the number of years, but rather to the very right of Congress to make such extensions indefinitely.
    Lawrence Lessig, says:
    http://www.redherring.com/insider/2002/10/r oast-pi g-copyright-102202.html
    "The Constitution says that copyrights are to be "for limited Times." The framers initially set those "limited Times" to be quite short--14 years, renewable once. After a limited time, copyrighted work was to pass into the public domain--a lawyer-free zone where publishers and creators can draw upon creative work without fear of legal liability. This text, the challengers say, forbids the extension of existing terms."

  3. Two good copyright decisions by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This year's copyright cases were quite favorable for the public domain.

    First, there's Kelly vs. AribaSoft, which held that thumbnail images are fair use. That's a good decision; it means we can have image indices, like Google's.

    Then there's Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Congress, regarding copyrights on the text of laws. Some states outsourced their building code creation to a semiprivate organization, which then claimed copyright on the text. The decision was clear: "'The law,' whether articulated in judicial opinions or legislative acts or ordinances, is in the public domain and thus not amenable to copyright." That's consistent with the general rule that when a government does something via a contractor, the government does not escape any obligations it would have if it did the job in-house. So you can scan in your local building code (or all the building codes in the country) and put it on line, even if some private company drafted the building code book.

  4. Mattel, Inc. v. Universal, Inc. by mbstone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know if this is the biggest IP case of 2002, but it's one of the funniest: Mattel v. Universal [warning: pdf link], which concerns MCA Records' release of a single called "Barbie Girls" (which, of course, drew a lawsuit from lawsuit-happy Mattel). Judge Alex Kozinski, one of the most hilarious judicial opinion-writers of our time, called this "the battle between "speech-Zilla and trademark-Kong."