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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. Eldred vs Ashcroft? (copyright duration extension) by divec · · Score: 5, Informative

    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"'

  2. My entry for biggest IP by X-BOX+LIVE+DEV+TEAM · · Score: 5, Funny

    156.102.116.238

    *Crosses fingers*

  3. You bastards... by KingAdrock · · Score: 5, Funny

    you've slashdotted Playboy!!!

  4. 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.