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Biggest IP cases of 2002
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)."
Tsk! I'm insulted that you think all slashdotters are porn-obsessed losers. Can't we get away from this sort of stereotype?
[5 seconds later]
Of course, it would be unfair not to be fully aware of both sides of the argument, so I'll have to thoroughly inspect her website. Purely for research purposes, you understand ...
The ongoing case against the retroactive extension of copyright duration is also very important to many people, including The Mutopia Project. Though of course, which cases are most important depends on your point of view.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Put a catchy IP trial header.
Put it as a Top 10 list of the year
Mix in Playboy in the summary
Now that you've got everyone's attention, put one of the top playmates's personnal webpage address, and witness the explosive results
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
156.102.116.238
*Crosses fingers*
you've slashdotted Playboy!!!
Umm... so if I go take a dump in a public toilet, I own a patent on what I 'deposited'...? U.S. Patent law is insane!
Eldred is a very interesting case. I'm optimistic the retroactive portion of the law stands a 50:50 chance of being struck down, despite the Court's conservatism and traditional deference to Congress in similar matters. As for prospective copyright terms, I really doubt the court will intervene, because the life+70/95 terms are not obviously unreasonable, esp. when compared to law in other countries -- even if they do seem a tad long as a matter of judgment.
EFF has done a nice job collecting legal materials as its website, useful as a reference even if one disagrees with their position.
What to make some money while testing your legal and psychic prowess? Try this contest.
(1) The best argument doesn't always win. Sometimes the lawyer who wins is the one who gets the ideologically sympathetic judge.
... or makes the most persuasive case that the judge's life hangs in the balance. Maybe these things don't happen (much) in America, but they do happen around the world (e.g. Colombia vs. Medellin cartel) and throughout history (e.g. late Roman republic).
... but Big Money? To my thinking, it's teachers and garbage collectors who deserve the Big Money -- try running a civilzation without those professions, see how ugly things get real quick.
Worse: in some systems, the lawyer who wins is the one who makes the biggest payoff to the judge
(2) What makes lawyers so deserving of Big Money? A living wage, sure
Of course, some lawyers work pro bono for the causes in which they believe. That's not good capitalism, but it's truly heroic.
That said, I agree with your point: better a free market legal system than a bloated bureaucracy.
-kgj
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.
Thanks for the list.r oast-pi g-copyright-102202.html
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/
"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."
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.
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."
Yep. There are two arguments in the quoted passage: First, that Congress has abused the meaning of "limited time"; second, that retroactive extensions of "existing terms" are prohibited. I'm sympathetic to the second, and think the first is for Congress not the courts.
I do sort of wish the Court would intervene to say the term has gotten too long, but don't want a precedent like that for the Court to do so in other cases. Historical experience has been that although unchecked power of Congress is bad, the unreviewable power of the Court can be worse, as when it was busy invalidating the New Deal. Given precedent, I don't think th Court will, and I'd prefer we petition Congress, as has happened with the DMCA.
But who cares what I think -- here is the transcript of the Oct. 9 oral argument, which discussion well describes the essentially simple dipute.