The War On Christmas Continues
WordLab: Santa’s Butt Hauled Into Court(re the travails of SANTA’S BUTT Beer).
Judge Posner To Speak In, Not On, Second Life, Really
Judge Richard Posner will be discussing his latest book, on the Constitution, in avatar form, in Second Life, on December 7. Odd, SL requests that you reserve a seat (as I would have thought that an infinite number of avatars could attend a lecture on the head of a pin). Information on free membership to SL here.
IP Job Website
Two Lawyers Walk Into A Courtroom . .
Two lawyers walk into a courtroom, the first lawyer goes “your client’s jokebooks infringe the copyrights of my clients, professional comedians such as Jay Leno and Rita Rudner” and the second lawyer says . . ok, it needs work.
p.s. I couldn’t find the complaint on Pacer – if you have a url, send it on over.
INTA Bulletin
The latest INTA Bulletin arrived. Highlights include an illustation of a fishing line guide (discussion of the registrability of same in this decision), report of Dutch case involving the Adidas three-stripe mark, and news of a famous mark decision from Poland (LEXUS).
Discussion of Pre-Loaded IPods
As the price of digital-playback devices (i.e. iPods) plumment, we may see more and more ‘pre-loaded’ offerings. Here a discussion of Load ‘N Go, a company that pre-loads iPods with video content (and bundles the related DVD). However the question arises whether it is cricumventing DRM sfotware to do so. Via IP Due Diligence Blog.
UPDATE: EFF on Load N’ Go and DVD “double-billing.”
WSJ On Google and Copyright
Wall St Journal: “Google Search: ‘Copyright‘”
Commentary thereon here.
Complaint in LV v. Landlord
Via Counterfeit Chic, a copy of a complaint filed last week in the Southern District of New York, in which Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and other owners of well-known trademarks, sue a landlord of properties in Chinatown where counterfeits are allegedly sold.
“Yahoo And Reuters Want You To Work For Their News Service?
NY Times: “Have Camera Phone? Yahoo and Reuters Want You to Work for Their News Service“:
“Hoping to turn the millions of people with digital cameras and camera phones into photojournalists, Yahoo and Reuters are introducing a new effort to showcase photographs and video of news events submitted by the public.”
. . .
Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. The basic payment may be relatively small, but he said Reuters was likely to pay more to people offering exclusive rights to images of major events. For now, no money is changing hands between Yahoo and Reuters, but if Reuters is able to create a separate news service with the user-created material, it will split the revenue with Yahoo.
Before photographs or videos are used on the Yahoo site or distributed by Reuters, photo editors at Reuters will try to vet them to weed out fraudulent or retouched images.”