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Indiana Intellectual Property Blog

~ Trademark and Copyright Law Developments in Indiana

Indiana Intellectual Property Blog

Category Archives: Legislation

Stories from the Week that Was – 12/25/11-12/31/11

02 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Artists, Bloggers, Copyright, Federal Initiatives, Intellectual Property, Legislation, Litigation, Privacy, Social Media, Stories from the Week that Was, Tech Developments

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Google, NDAA, PhoneDog, Scottie Pippen, SOPA

Stories from the Week that Was – 12/25/11-12/31/11

2011 was quite a year. We witnessed intellectual property trump civil liberties time and time again. I’ll continue to archive the most important stories from each week, although I’m no longer certain it’s best for my mental health. Onward and upward (hopefully).

Copyrights Are No Longer About Copies (Part 1): William Patry

Creativity Springs From Careful Copying (Part 2): William Patry

Statement by the President on H.R. 1540 (the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012)

Artists: Can You Be Sued for Including a Real Person in Your Painting?

SOPA is the end of us, say bloggers

Company sues former employee over right to Twitter followers

Scottie Pippie Files Suit Claiming Websites Falsely Labeled Him as Bankrupt; Is Blog Tag Defamatory?

Google+ Censoring Borderline Offensive Profile Images; Author Images in Search Results To Blame?

Stories from the Week that Was – 12/18-12/24/11

26 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Bloggers, Copyright, Federal Initiatives, Legislation, Privacy, Stories from the Week that Was, Tech Developments

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SOPA, USPTO

Stories from the Week that Was – 12/18-12/24/11

Dear Internet: It’s No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works

USPTO gets a new website

In the eyes of the law, are we all public figures on Facebook?

Don’t Break the Internet

“The intellectual property situation is bad and getting worse. To be a programmer, it requires that you understand as much law as you do technology.” – Eric Allman

Stories from the Week that Was – 12/11-12/17/11

18 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Copyright, Federal Initiatives, Legislation, Litigation, Stories from the Week that Was

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Anonymous, NDAA, SOPA, Wikipedia

Stories from the Week that Was – 12/11-12/17/11

Zeitgeist 2011: Year In Review – YouTube

Info no go: Wikipedia threatens strike over US piracy bill

Retrospective Video by Anonymous Includes Ominous Warning

SOPA, the NDAA, and Patent-Trolling: Why Americans Need a Civil Liberties Caucus

A Statement from Louis C.K.
“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” – Mitchell Kapor

Stories from the Week that Was – 11/27-12/3/11

04 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Bloggers, Copyright, Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property, Legislation, Litigation, Patent, Privacy, Social Media, Stories from the Week that Was, Tech Developments, Trademark

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Brownback, lawrence lessig

Stories from the Week that Was – 11/27-12/3/11

USPTO releases 2011 Performance and Accountability Report

Researcher’s Video Shows Secret Software on Millions of Phones Logging Everything

US judge orders hundreds of sites “de-indexed” from Google, Facebook

Governor Brownback apologizes to Emma Sullivan over Twitter tiff

The Copyright Industry – A Century Of Deceit

Teen Tweeter Won’t Apologize To Kansas Governor

US Senate To Vote On Bill That Will Allow The Military To Arrest Americans On American Soil And Hold Them Indefinitely

“As we’ve seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture.” -Lawrence Lessig

USPTO releases 2011 Performance and Accountability Report

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Federal Initiatives, Intellectual Property, Legislation

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USPTO

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has released its annual Performance and Accountability Report for fiscal year 2011. Full text below.

View this document on Scribd

Symposium at IU-Indy Will Examine New Patent Law

01 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Indianapolis, Legislation, Patent

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IU-Indy

The Intellectual Property Law and Innovation Symposium at Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis on Dec. 2 will focus on recent changes to patent law created by the America Invents Act (AIA).

The Center for Intellectual Property Law and Innovation has assembled a distinguished group to analyze the AIA from a variety of perspectives, focusing on the Act’s implications for the life sciences. Speakers include a legendary patent law jurist, patent reform leaders, chief corporate patent counsel, leading practitioners and scholars, as well as the PTO’s Patent Reform Coordinator.

The event carries 4.5 hours of CLE credit, pending approval. Registration is $125, which includes materials, refreshments and lunch. The event runs from noon to 6 p.m. at the law school, 530 W. New York St., Indianapolis. For more information, visit the law school’s website.

Measuring the Impact of Patent Reform on Life Sciences Companies

26 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Federal Initiatives, Indiana, Legislation, Patent

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Indiana Health Industry Forum, Life Sciences

Kristin Jones, President and CEO of the Indiana Health Industry Forum, has an editorial piece in the latest Indianapolis Business Journal on the impact of the new U.S. patent law on life sciences companies:

For others, this act has been labeled an “innovation killer,” handing over market control to large corporations, driving inventors and potential entrepreneurs back into their labs to toil in secret, and basically halting America’s leadership in research and development.

For Indiana’s life sciences sector, it both raises hopes and creates challenges for continued growth.

For large or small companies, the product development life cycle for a biological therapy comes with a lot of risk. It can take a decade or more and over $1 billion to bring a product to market, and the product can fail at pretty much any point in that process. For the majority of the time in development, a company’s intellectual property is its primary asset.

For larger companies, that risk is spread across multiple products (the company’s pipeline); for smaller companies, everything may depend on the success or failure of a single molecule or protein. Large or small, intellectual property plays a huge role in a life sciences company’s valuation and business strategy.

Check out IBJ.com for the full story.

Stories from the Week that Was – 11/13-11/19/11

20 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Bloggers, Copyright, Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property, Legislation, Litigation, Musicians, Privacy, Social Media, Stories from the Week that Was, Tech Developments

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Intellectual Property, Righthaven, Social Media, Viacom

Stories from the Week that Was – 11/13-11/19/11

Press Russia on intellectual property: US lawmakers

Criminal Case Glut Impedes Civil Suits

Picking Brand Names in China Is a Business Itself

The Entrepreneurial Generation

The NLRB’s Obsession with Social Media Continues

Viacom so devastated by piracy that CEO gets $50 million raise

Woman decapitated after anti-crime blog, police say

Attorneys seek to auction Righthaven copyrights

Artists Sue CBS, CNET, for Promoting and Profiting from Piracy

SOPA and Protect IP: What Legal Nightmares Are Made of

Number of 90-plus people likely to quadruple by 2050

Are Digital Resale Markets Legal? Should They Be?

“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.” -R. Buckminster Fuller

Indiana AG Greg Zoeller to Lobby Congress Against Cellphone Bill

03 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Federal Initiatives, Indiana, Legislation, Litigation, Southern District of Indiana, Tech Developments

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Do Not Call, Greg Zoeller

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said he will lobby Congress on Friday against a federal bill he says would strip the telephone privacy rights of residents in Indiana. Zoeller plans to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology against House Resolution 3035, a primarily Republican-backed bill being considered in the U.S. House. The bill would allow telemarketers and debt collectors to start dialing residents’ cellphones and, if approved, would override Indiana’s “Do Not Call” law and lead to a flood of robocalls to people’s phones, Zoeller said Wednesday.

Supporters of the bill say it would update federal law to allow businesses to compete in an environment where cellphones have largely replaced landlines.

Zoeller is fighting on multiple legal fronts to maintain Indiana’s strong “Do Not Call” law and ban on political robocalls.

The Southern District of Indiana ruled in September that Indiana’s ban on political robocalls violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protections Act which governs interstate communications. The Indiana Supreme Court is separately considering whether the state rightfully enforced the measure against FreeEats.com.

For more info, see the Journal and Courier.

Indiana lawmakers to consider upskirt ban

09 Sunday Jan 2011

Posted by Kenan Farrell in Entertainment Law, Indiana, Legislation, Right of Publicity, Tech Developments

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Invasion of Privacy by Photography

In dealing with the apparent scourge of upskirt photography, a key Indiana Senate committee will consider a proposed bill Tuesday by State Sen. Tom Wyss (R-Fort Wayne) that would make it illegal to take or distribute pictures or video of a person’s private areas.

The bill would establish the new crime of “Invasion of Privacy by Photography,” a Class A misdemeanor. A crime is committed if a person, with the intent to: (1) gratify the person’s sexual desires; (2) humiliate or embarrass the victim; or (3) publish, transmit, or disseminate the photograph; surreptitiously photographs the private area of an individual under circumstances in which a reasonable person would believe that the individual’s private area would not be visible to the public.

The penalty is increased to a Class D felony if the person knowingly or intentionally publishes, transmits, or otherwise disseminates the photograph.

Full text of the proposed bill:

IC 35-45-4-6 IS ADDED TO THE INDIANA CODE

Sec. 6. (a) As used in this section, “private area” means the naked or undergarment clad genitals, pubic area, or buttocks of an individual.
(b) A person who, without the consent of the individual:
(1) knowingly or intentionally:
(A) surreptitiously photographs, video records, or captures a digital image of the private area of an individual by means of camera, a video camera, or any other type of video recording device, whether or not the photograph, video, or image is permanently saved; or
(B) performs an act described in clause (A) under circumstances in which a reasonable person would believe that the individual’s private area would not be visible to the public; and
(2) performs the act described in subdivision (1) with the intent to:
(A) gratify the sexual desires of the person;
(B) humiliate or embarrass the individual; or
(C) publish, transmit, or otherwise disseminate the photograph, video, or digital image; commits invasion of privacy by photography, a Class A misdemeanor. However, the offense is a Class D felony if the person knowingly or intentionally publishes the photograph, video, or digital image or otherwise knowingly or intentionally transmits or disseminates the photograph, video, or digital image to another person.

Members of the Senate Committee on Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters will review the bill on Tuesday, January 11 at 9 a.m. in Room 130 of the Statehouse. The law would become effective on July 1, 2011.

My initial thoughts: I didn’t realize that upskirt photography was such a big deal but it shouldn’t come as a surprise given that everyone has a small camera or cameraphone in their hands nowadays and fashion often involves half-fallen-off clothing. I expect this bill, like many others, is actually just one piece of a much larger puzzle. An immediate concern with the bill is its potential for arbitrary enforcement. First, in what places would a individual’s private area be considered reasonably visible to the public? Las Vegas? The beach? A half-marathon? If a person has their private area willingly exposed (I’m looking at you, Indy 500 crowd), is it now illegal to take photos or do they give implied consent to the entire crowd? If you take a photo of a person and accidentally catch a crotch shot, are you now a criminal?

A person who, without consent, knowingly surreptitiously photographs the private area of an individual by means of a camera with the intent to publish the photograph. By my reading, this could include almost any photo you might take of someone running the Mini to post on Facebook or a blog if the photo shows their “private area.” If that’s the case, the language of this bill definitely needs to be tightened up to avoid potentially draconian enforcement.

Presumably, the state government and businesses would also have to abide by this law, in which case it could serve as a strong shield against the ever-encroaching security/surveillance industry. Just to be certain, it would be nice if this bill specifically included not only “persons” but also organizations and surveillance cameras.

Better yet, here’s a possible “real world” solution…Get over the outdated concept of “private areas.” There are now over 6 billion people on the planet. About half have a penis and about half have a vagina. Acknowledge this biological fact and move on…really, kids age 4 understand this.

I’ll keep you updated as the bill proceeds.

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