Hooray for the Stanford Law School Fair Use Victory

Kudos to Stanford's Acting English Professor Carol Shloss's court victory. It seems her victory went a long way to "...push back against overly aggressive copyright enforcement." This case sets a precedent for future cases involving alleged copyright infringement and how much is to much enforcement when its intended purpose is to share others works within an academic framework. "But this is just the first of a series of cases that will be necessary to establish the reality of creative freedom that the 'fair use' doctrine is intended to protect in theory."

I cannot help but wonder just how much those copied excepts packeted and printed for UMass student course requirements, by Collective Copies, contains royalty shares. My guess, and only a guess, is a large part of it. Collective Copies makes a disclaimer on the cover page to insure all that they fully comply with all rightful and legal copyrights. From my perspective, it's possible all these excepts are published under the exemptions scheduled in sec. 107 and, perhaps we're paying royalties to those who are not legally entitled to receive them. Remember, those packets are used in the course of academics not in an arbitrary reproduction mode. Now if student were warned about reproducing those packet without the expressed approval of the rightful owners, then this becomes a legal issue. But I don't see those packets as infringements. This could be a obnoxious case of Collective Copies adhering to owners who have threatened them or the packet organizers, UMass faculty, with litigation if the checks not in the mail. This seems to be another example of an "overly aggressive enforcement" campaign by those strong and talented against the weak and in firmed. Then again, why would faculty care if they're not buying the packets?

Enforcement doesn't need to be formalized by the filing of a cause of complaint or cause of action, it just requires some overt intention from the property owners to sue if the smell of infringement is imminent. Such as their threat, as in the Schloss case, to sue to enforce one's copyrights is no longer a deterrent to lawful republication.

Finally, shame on those UMass faculty members who are being bullied by Collective Copies and those owners who are collecting royalties they are not legally entitled too. By doing this they are depriving graduate and undergraduates 'fair use' access, which, I might add, the statute affords us to "work[s] we love and share it with others."

More to come!

When You Lose the First, Settle the Remainder

Settlement fever is in the air between Broadcom and its aggressive competitor, Qualcom. See, Qualcom Sues Broadcom Settle Another Patent Dispute. These two telecommunication giants have been litigating since Carter was a peanut farmer (just kidding!). Recently, a federal judge in San Diego, California, found in favor of Broadcom in one of its many ongoing legal Intellectual Property and Patents claims with Qualcom, by ruling that the "Broadcom...did not infringe on two Qualcom patents for video compression technology." How surprising now the two sides have decided to settle other pending court claims.

If you lose the first, the indicator, all others are probably destined to fail on the same continuum. This appears to be the case here. Maybe these two should consider an Acquisition or Merger (or maybe if this fails a hostile takeover)! But either way by the time these two cease their adolescent court battling, I suspect they'll be vividly familiar with each others technologies; thus, leaving them no other choice than an involuntary merger. They need to protect those technology secrets somehow. It's obvious Broadcom has the competitive edge or if they don't, they know what Qualcom knows, which apparently is not much of a 'Patented', 'Intellectual' secret in today's capitalistic marketplace.

More to come!

BRIAN C. MARQUIS

Verizon versus Cisco?

In brief, I just finished reading the text on how Verizon managed to overpower innate jurors with legal patent gibberish. Out of eight alleged Vonage patents infringements (and several fraud counts), Verizon prevailed on five. This is somewhat surprising! Given Verizon's past history of packing the courtroom with lethal advocacy science, it's so wonder the jurors are still not scratching their bald heads. It's not like jurors to fully comprehend and digest all their scientific medicine injected by one shot, but it's surprising they found Verizon more believable than Vonage.

To that end, quoting CNET News.com, Verizon representatives commenting on 19 June 2006 "...would not comment whether or not the company is looking into filing lawsuits against other VoIP providers." This is a 'deep link' underscored out of "...filed a lawsuit against Vonage in June 2006..." from the 08 March 2007 article. My concern: If Verizon sought patent infringement damages against Vonage, would Cisco be next? Remember Cisco in their battle with Apple, well, they use the VoIP, too. This is the service they're using with their new Phone. I cannot help but wonder if a lawsuit is imminent! And if a lawsuit is imminent, would Apple step in if Cisco loses a patent infringement to Verizon on the VoIP. If this happens then the iPhone trademark would be Apple's forever. Maybe the Apple is sweeter on the Verizon.

If there's insider information, please feel free to share it with me! An Apple a day helps keep the jury away.

Cool!

BRIAN C. MARQUIS

Speech Confusion?

Recently I remarked about whether or not the infamous McDoanld's would prevail if for example some dope like myself were to register a domain name equal to Mickey D's. As an example I used the catalouge outfitters, L.L. Bean, located in Maine. The thrust of my argument was predicated on whether or not I could sucessfully register a domian site similar to that of L.L. Bean, and if my busniness was unlike any Bean product, could I survive a regulator's scurtiny.

This comes to light because I wanted to share the case law I used to springboard my argument from: L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Drake Publishes, Inc., 811 F.2d 26 (1st Cir. 1987). Although the instant case is relevant to a trademark infringement, (defendant copied plaintiff's trademark and made parody of it in the middle of a written publication, not on the cover or back but in the middle). First Circuit, sitting per curium, correctly so, found in favor of defendant and consequently reversed and remanded the case back to the district court for proceedings not inconsistent with its mandate.

This case is notable because it's not a far stretch to think, someday, this could occur on somebody else's web page (perhaps TolandPools.com). What's also relevant here is Professor Katsh's, sitting as the sole panelist for the ICANN hearing, decision in favor of TolandPools.com. Although his decision, to some, may not be exponential, it's a case involving the online exercising of one's constitutional right to Free Speech. Not only can one express oneself online and in writing, but taking a registered trademark and making parody of it in a hard cover magazine continues the inherent constitutional right we've all come to expect from that great legal document--Freedom of Speech.

Essentially, whether Professor Katsh realized it or not, (I am sure he did!) his decision set the benchmark for future disputes not untoward the online role of Freedom of Speech and, moreover, how future regulators will be required to rule/decide.

BRIAN C. MARQUIS