Idea Lawyer Blog

The proper use of honorifics is no small matter in Germany, a society given to formality where even longtime neighbors insist on addressing each other using their surnames. Those with advanced degrees like to show them off, and it is not uncommon to earn more than one. A male faculty member with two PhDs can fully expect to be called "Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt," for example.

Stanford attracted a full house at the "free to the public thanks to the generous support of GOOGLE" Legal Futures conference Saturday March 8, 2008. It followed an all day "invitation" session and one could detect that more than a few participants referred to Friday and continued discussions to which most of the "public" (read: not invited to Friday) were not privy.
The weather: delicious!!!
The food: yummy (see photo post below) The seating: ergonomic The discourse: temperate as the weather

The first "Foo session" after the oft imitated, never duplicated O'Reilly Foo Camp

The Future of Professionally Created Content. OR
Critical Thinking and Learning to Triangulate from various sources of questionable veracity.
The Honorable Alex Kozinski primed the discussion by posing where will the objective (read "professional") news gathering come from now that the 60 feet on the ground in Bagdad are not paid for by the NYT. Although largely limited to the predictable gab about cost of distribution of mass consumed content (a la Lord of the Rings thanks to Cappucio of Time Warner) some panelists did go a bit deeper. Lessig tossed out Sandler's Foundation: journalism in the public interest. Microsoft Assoc. GC Tom Rubin dubbed the internet "short form creativity".
UC Berkeley prof and Google Chief economist Hal Varian quipped that folks pay to support a NY Yankee but not a NY Times Reporter and hey, that's just the market.
How can you get your news (pudding) if you don't read the paper (eat yer meat- apologies Pink Floyd)

Allusions were made to the age of NY Times readership (54) and the source of news to the YouTube generation: The Daily Show.

On truthfulness: my scribbles lead me to ascribe Cappucio with a story of news in cold war Russia, where a reader assumes everybody is lying and therefore the reader "triangulates" from a variety of "untrustworthy" sources to figure out the truth.
So is the moral of the story, don't believe everything you see on YouTube and the Daily Show?

Noteworthy:
Paul Cappucio, General Counsel of Time Warner said the music industry is doing FINE. !?!!?

Larry Lessig seemed intent on brawling with ALEX KEEN (whose business card dubs himself "the antichrist of silicon valley") on matters in Keen's book, "The Cult of the Amateur: how today's internet is killing our culture." Foo Session or not, participants deserve to be let in on what took the appearance of a domestic squabble, with most of the action offstage.

For a different take, see:
Valley Zen coverage of Professional versus Amateur Content

Panelists (L to R) : Lawrence Lessig, Andrew Keen, Hal Varian, Tom Rubin, Paul Cappuccio, and the Honorable Alex Kozinski

As my blog cred grows, I get more requests to publicize and endorse...so far no perks, other than "moral happiness" (see my Feb 2008 book review column on Stumbling on Happiness)
In any event, thanks to John Tsai of UC Berkeley who asked so very nicely that I publicize the following:

IP & Entrepreneurship Symposium

March 7 & 8, 2008 ~ UC Berkeley Law School

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT) and the Berkeley Technology Law Journal (BTLJ).

BCLT's 12th Annual Symposium will explore the role of intellectual property -- and patent law in particular -- in promoting entrepreneurship and in providing incentives to entrepreneurs, bringing together speakers from a broad range of disciplines, including economics, law, business, and other fields. The panelists include distinguished professors, attorneys, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists who have been actively involved in the information technology, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and green technology sectors.

At the Symposium, BCLT will introduce its project on intellectual property and entrepreneurship, launched this year with the generous support of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. We will discuss the current state of knowledge about the field of intellectual property and entrepreneurship, as well as our plans for empirical and theoretical research.

To that end, we will explore such questions as whether, when, and why entrepreneurs obtain patents, focusing on the role that patent rights play in decisions to invest in start-ups and how investors and entrepreneurs assess the scope and value of their own and other firms’ patent rights in the course of deciding which business opportunities to pursue. Furthermore, we will explore the challenges that entrepreneurs face when licensing or enforcing patents, looking at issues such as the effects of “patent trolls” on entrepreneurs and how patent thickets, standards, and the need to cross-license may present strong barriers to entry for entrepreneurs.

We plan to discuss the role patents play in an increasingly open and collaborative innovation environment, exploring the effects of patent rights on issues such as open source software, open standards, interoperability and employee mobility. Lastly, we will explore the timely question of whether entrepreneurs should care about patent reform initiatives.

Registration discounts are available for BCLT Sponsors and Entrepreneurs. Details are here:
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/bclt/entrepreneurship/registration.html

You can also contact David Grady at or call 510-642-3702.

10.5 units of MCLE credit will be available for attendees of the symposium.

Symposium Website:
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/bclt/entrepreneurship/

Register Now:
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/bclt/entrepreneurship/registration.html

About BCLT:
http://bclt.berkeley.edu

About BTLJ:
http://www.btlj.org/

Not Katrina, but when the rain comes down, so do the palm branches...
We DO need the rain:)

Photo credit: YoursTruly
Rightfully reserved
Use with caution

Stanford offers so much to us here in Palo Alto/Silicon Valley. If you missed this talk, see the Dec 6 (below) on facial recognition cues. Perhaps by then I'll have played to oft touted new games, and some discourse informed by experience will ensue.

***SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM***
( http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_static?page=forum.html)

How Science Thinks: The Science and Engineering of Science and Engineering

Prof. Jeff Shrager
Associate Professor in Symbolic Systems, CommerceNet

Thursday, Nov. 29th, 2007
4:15-5:30 pm
Building 380, Room 380C (Math Corner)
MAP: http://campus-map.stanford.edu/index.cfm?ID=01-380
(Parking in nearby lots at no charge after 4 pm)


ABSTRACT:

For over three decades cognitive scientists have been studying how science works and how scientists think. What have we learned about scientific cognition and about science as a human activity? How has this informed cognitive science more generally? How has it helped us build semi-automated discovery systems and better tools to support scientific practice and facilitate discovery? How does this all play with the Web 24.0 vision? (**) In this talk I'll use some of my own, and a lot of other people's research to lead a guided tour to some partial answers to these interesting questions.

Jeff Shrager is consulting associate professor of Symbolic Systems. His work spans human and machine learning and development, and both computational and "wet" marine biology and drug discovery. He current leads the Health Care Initiative at CommerceNet which is using Web 24.0 technology (**) to build Virtual Pharmaceutical Companies to address rare and orphan diseases.

(** If Web 1.0 is the current web, Web 2.0 the social web, Web 3.0 the semantic web, and Web 4.0 the programmable web, then Web 24.0 (1*2*3*4) is be the programmable social semantic web. I just made this term up for this talk, but it's actually rather appropriate, as you'll see!)

***

More upcoming events:

Dec. 6 SSP Forum: David C. Wilkins, Symbolic Systems Program, "Learning to Recognize Facial Emotions: Art Versus Psychology", 4:15-5:30 pm, 380-380C

About this list: To subscribe to the Symbolic Systems Program events
list, send an email message to majordomo@list.stanford.edu and type
"subscribe ssp-events" as the first text line of your message. To
unsubscribe, do the same except type "unsubscribe" instead of
"subscribe". For more information on upcoming events, click on
"Events" or "SSP Calendar" at http://symsys.stanford.edu. This list
includes all current students and faculty in the Symbolic Systems
Program, plus those who sign up directly to
ssp-events@lists.stanford.edu. Those who are signed up directly can
unsubscribe by sending a message to majordomo@lists.stanford.edu with
"unsubscribe ssp-events" as the first text line.

See the NYT coverage of the Supreme Court justices discussing the nature of the inventive act. You can read for yourself the age old discussion of "how much creativity is enough" to qualify for the limited 20 year monopoly- a "patent right." Should the standard of what qualifies as an invention be changed? A reader wrote to me about the article, and pointed out at least one legal voice predicting business chaos from any change in the current test for what is "obvious" versus what is "invention", where "business" means "patent holders" and presumably "big business". Now Dear Readers: Should this discussion - or decision- affect those entrepreneurs or venture funded companies as they pursue the time-honored tradition of bolstering their chances of economic viability by applying for intellectual property rights? Absolutely not. Neglecting to allocate some resources for identifing company-created patent prospects is tantmount to instructing your CPA to stop seeking tax advantages because its not clear what the IRS may do. Stay bold! Keep creating; keep applying for proprietary rights.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/business/29bizcourt.html?ex=1165899600&en=8a9d5bd559b34ac8&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Gamers - here are 10 tips (compliments of Businessweek) for packaging your game to sell.
Careful - decisions are made in as little as 50 milliseconds...not much time to make a first impression, eh?
Short form, just for starters.....
1. Keep it simple, (silly!)
2. Dress for Success
3. Less Talk More Action
......(keep reading below)....

Continue reading "BOXING the GAME" »

Stultification or Sway?

Quote of the day:Robert Jackson
"The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish."
Media literacy is squandered under the mind numbing minions of self promotion on the web: a purgatory of other people's kids/pets/pratfalls in print/ photo/video.
What of the potential for "internet journalism" ? I commend a New Yorker article entitled "Journalism without the Journalists" by Nicholas Lemann... read the "best" of "hyperlocal" journalism.... (and you thought your life was mundane).
Arguably the "opposite of Oprah" or sensationalized self-obsession, hyperlocal journalism highlights by contrast a distal point of internet-enabled free speech: a borderless venue for conscious responsive social journalism of staggering sway. How can one best use and appreciate the precious right of free speech? What is the most potent form of communication? Let us know what you think....

Disinclined to waste anything as precious as time, I must salvage yesterday's random point & click on the internet into the sembalnce of a blog entry ....here's the path I clicked...
beginning with "parody" and "fair use" as general topics, I visited:
Google's website for public posting of video's and laughed at low brow parodies of Shakira (while listening to the entire song - something about Hips----).....{my preferred writing music is Johnny Marr and The Healers}
http://The Law and Politics of Internet Activism: The Yes Men, Peta, Rtmark, and the Phenomenon of Parody Websites by Anita Ramasastry;

coverage of the Ludlow Music versus Jib Jab case and settlement [ i commend downloading the EFF complaint and viewing pdfs of Woody Guthrie's original documents filed in the US Copyright Office....]
EFF's Fred von Lohmann writes:
"The idea of copyright law is that, after a time, every work comes back into the hands of the public, where it can be reused, recycled, made part of new creativity without having to pay a fee or call in the lawyers. That's the great thing, the real genius of copyright."(emphasis added)
moving through Kevin Heller's blawg
checking out MP3 aggregators
elbo.ws
At the end of my click fest, I still am unclear about how much of a copyrighted new release I can use for my upcoming vlog (!!!) without taking one or more licenses. However, I might go buy a Shakira tune to play during my next click fest.

One in every color?

Sony's seven-megapixel Cyber-shot(R) DSC-T10 digital still camera premiers this summer in pink, white, black and silver.
The camera's design "...is so stylish that it can be viewed as a fashion accessory " quipped Phil Lubell, director of marketing for digital still cameras and photo printers at Sony Electronics.
"The number of digital still cameras per household is steadily increasing, up to three or four, which suggests that people are buying cameras to fulfill different needs."

So fashion IS a need - --?
Design patents address ornamentation of useful objects, so one might define "fashion" as a social "ornamentation recognition" ......

Patent attorneys - protectors of fashion.
I love my job.

Chocolate chocolate chocolate
(imagine these immortal words intoned by Cary Grant rather than the ho hum Grant inflected "judy, Judy Judy).....

I love chocolate ----- what sort of patents apply to chocolate?
stay tuned as we bring several blogs on food and technology this month.
meanwhile see
http://www.cocoavia.com

Ya gotta ask (and answer) yourself:
IS IT MINE, MINE ALL MINE????

Before you borrow (cut/paste/sample/morph/imitate/reproduce, etc)
from *anyone* (dead, alive, or undetermined) else's work, make sure that the core of what you're creating is really your own.
Refresh your recollection: see http://www.copyright.gov
and try http://www.creativecommons.org

If you can trace the origin of the core to YOUR creative juice, and have asked permission or followed the guidelines of "kosher-copyrighting", then odds are you'll be okay. If you have a co-owner (co- creator or assignee of some or all rights) , we'll talk about that in another tip....

Niggling doubts....grey areas....you borrowed the mp3 riff of your buddy's dog howling but hey but the dog is dead and you know the dude /tte would be cool but you haven't asked.... either alter your project or seek written permission for borrowing.

TIP: Have your own permission letter handy to email and get permission...Make it easy for them to say YES!
Sample letters- stay tuned for the workshop section of this blog...

Continue reading "Copyright: Tips - Kosher Copyrighting- Keep a Form Handy" »

If your personal manager, attorney, and agent do their jobs, you're going to be making money. Handling that money is your business manager's job.

Continue reading "Music: Business Manager" »

The protection given by a copyright is not absolute. You--or anybody else--can use protected materials without permission in at least two ways.
One way; PARODY

Continue reading "Copyright: Parody" »

Senate Hearings on High Performance Computing
NEVILLE's NOTE: Read section in S2802 (link in Irving's post) on National Math and Science Day in Schools- there's a merchandizing oppotunity here -!

Last month, the Subcommittee on Technology, Innovation and Competitiveness of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held hearings on high-performance computing.

See the July posting and the comments of Irving Wladawsky-Berger
http://irvingwb.typepad.com
intro:
"I had the honor to be one of the witnesses that testified before the Subcommittee and its chairman Senator John Ensign. I submitted my written testimony in advance, which I then summarized during the actual hearings and answered questions along with the other panelists.

I said that supercomputing was essential for innovation in the worlds of science and commerce, most of all because of its applications, including defense, energy, health care, science and engineering. It is thus very important that the Federal Government support basic research in supercomputing, especially pilots to develop working systems in applications that are key to national security, competitiveness and innovation.

Continue reading "Super Computers - Senate testimony: High Performance Computing" »

SAMPLING - Hi tech "cut and paste....." or "how can scanning my own copy be wrong???"

Technical transformations. From digital sampling to the hi-tech manufacture of sculptures, artists are increasingly using technology to let them "capture" and swiftly transform other people's ideas. Increasingly, though, the courts are sticking up for the people whose materials are borrowed.

Continue reading "Copyright: BORROWING- 90's style" »