27 Monday Dec 2010
Posted in Intellectual Property
Tags
Citation of Legal Authority, Intellectual Property, Northern District of Indiana, Notice to Pro Se Litigants
Intellectual Property practitioners in Indiana should note the following Amendments to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana Local Rules, effective December 1, 2010.
The pertinent Amendments involve Citation of Legal Authority (Local Rule 7.1), Summary Judgment Procedure (Local Rule 56.1) and Notice to Pro Se Litigants (Local Rule Appendix C).
17 Friday Dec 2010
Posted in Authors, Indiana, Intellectual Property, Social Media, Tech Developments
Tags
Indiana University Maurer School of Law's IP Program, Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property Theory
Be sure to check out IP Theory, a new peer-edited intellectual property law publication hosted by Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s IP Program. It is neither law journal nor blog; it is a different sort of publication designed to occupy a niche between the two.
IP Theory is intended to serve as a forum for:
So who’s going to submit an article to IP Theory?
04 Wednesday Mar 2009
Posted in Copyright, Intellectual Property
Copyright maven Kenny Crews will speak tomorrow at Yale University about his landmark 2008 study for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in which he compares fair use and other copyright limitations/exceptions across some 150 countries.
Kenny Crews has a distinguished career in copyright and fair use issues. He is currently the Director of the Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University. Until his appointment at Columbia in January 2009, he was a professor at Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis and the IU School of Library and Information Science. His work has won wide acclaim, and he has been active in projects and initiatives on copyright law in the United States and around the world. You can read more about his work here.
Th speech is co-hosted by the Yale University Library and the Yale Law School’s Information Society Project.
When: Thursday, March 5, 3:00 p.m.
Where: Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall, 128 Wall Street
Cost: Free and open to public
Disclosure – Kenny Crews taught my Intellectual Property & Copyright courses back in law school. Therefore, I’d have to hold him at least partially responsible for my career in intellectual property law. He’s an enthusiastic and engaging speaker. I look forward to seeing the results of his study.
11 Wednesday Feb 2009
Posted in Intellectual Property, What I'm Reading
On top of all the blogs, law journals, and case updates that I read each day, I also make sure to set aside time to read one Intellectual Property or Tech law book each month. When I find a book that might be useful for clients, I’ll post a quick review:
Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business by Paul Goldstein, Stanford Law School.
The Amazon description:
“The definitive guide to intellectual property for business managers.
How can a product of the mind—an innovation, a song, a logo, a business secret—become the subject of precise property rights? No idea is entirely original; every innovative business borrows, sometimes extensively, from its competitors and others. So how do we draw the line between fair and unfair use?
Billions of dollars ride on that question, as do the fates of publishers, software producers, drug companies, advertising firms, and many others. It’s also a key question for individuals—for instance, if you quit your job after mastering the company’s secrets, what can you do with that information?
With the growth of the internet and global markets, having a smart IP strategy is more essential than ever. Intellectual Property is the ideal book for non-lawyers who deal with patents, trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights—all essential business issues that have changed rapidly in the last few years.
Every business decision that involves IP is also a legal decision, and every legal decision is also a business decision. Lawyers and managers need to work together to navigate these murky waters, and this book shows how.”
My take:
Paul Goldstein is a frequent author on intellectual property topics. In fact, he’s written all types of books…fiction novels, treatises, textbooks and “General Interest” works like the book above. I recall using one of his IP textbooks back in law school.
Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business provides a nice ground-level view of intellectual property. Each area of IP law (patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret) is placed into historical context, helping the reader understand the current state of the law and to identify trends for the future. Goldstein provides the principles and rationales behind our laws, to help the reader understand the ongoing struggle to define the boundaries of IP protection. The book also details the influence of heavyweight industries (biotech, software/electronics, movie studios and music labels) in expanding and contracting IP law via lobbying and strategic litigation. Besides being useful to anyone with an interest in basic intellectual property law, this book can also be helpful to experienced IP attorneys in that it can suggest new ways to express complicated IP concepts in layman terms.
“The central lesson of this book is that every decision involving intellectual assets is ultimately a legal decision, and that every legal decision is at bottom a business decision. If intellectual property is economically too important to be left to lawyers, it is also too legally charged to be left to managers.”
04 Wednesday Feb 2009
Posted in Intellectual Property, Patent
A new study conducted by Purdue University researchers notes that the global recession is putting vital information, including valuable intellectual property assets, at greater risk than ever before. The study was commissioned by McAfee and conducted by researchers from Purdue’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS).
Of 800 senior IT decision makers surveyed in the U.S., UK, Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil and the Middle East, it was estimated that a combined $4.6 billion worth of intellectual property was lost in 2008 alone, and approximately $600 million was spent repairing damage from data breaches. Based on these numbers, McAfee projected that companies worldwide lost more than $1 trillion last year.
“Companies are grossly underestimating the loss, and value, of their intellectual property,” said Eugene Spafford, professor of computer science at Purdue and executive director of CERIAS. “Just like gold, diamonds or crude oil, intellectual property is a form of currency that is traded internationally, and can have serious economic impact if it is stolen.”
McAfee and CERIAS identify three trends that will make critical information more vulnerable:
The first trend is that the insider threat will grow. Business failures, mass layoffs, decimated markets and a poor economic outlook will lead to a vastly increased number of financially desperate current employees and laid-off staff stealing valuable corporate information, both for financial gain and to improve their job opportunities.
Secondly, there will be more sophisticated and targeted attacks from cybercriminals. Attackers will comb blogs, press releases, magazine and newspaper articles, corporate information databases and social networking sites to gather details of executives’ public and private lives in order to gain access to user IDs, passwords, financial and systems account information and other sensitive corporate data. Web 2.0 technologies and cloud computing where people collaborate, share and use existing components to build new applications will create an environment of great innovation but can also create a back door for cybercriminals to steal sensitive data.
The third trend that McAfee observed was geo-information “hot zones.” As China and Russia’s economies soften, there will be even more pressure to “appropriate” intellectual property as a means to continue economic growth. Organized crime and state-sponsored groups in both Russia and China will continuously seek out new and profitable targets. Pakistan looms as potentially the largest threat, with attackers motivated by ideology rather than economic gain.
As information becomes increasingly vulnerable, it’s important to take extra precautions to maintain and enforce your intellectual property rights. Make sure that your company is protecting it’s valuable IP assets and not letting your investment slip out the back door!
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