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May 08, 2007

The Paper Chase Part Deux - Blawg style

Thank you Professor Bainbridge for allowing respected and feared mentor Professor Kingsfield as your substitute in drafting the latest Blawg Review.  You have succeeded in transporting me back to my 1L year at Texas Tech where Socrates ruled my world.  Very clever.

Posted by Laura C. Wood at 04:30 PM.
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February 15, 2007

New FedCirc.us Search Tool Released

The master plan for the FedCirc.us site includes several web features designed to deliver patent caselaw information in a more effective manner.  The first - the GimmeTen! feature - has quickly become the most popular page on the site...and for good reason.  Not familiar with it?  Simply bookmark http://10.fedcirc.us and visit regularly.  That page always provides concise summaries of the ten most recently posted case reviews.  We're confident you'll quickly be hooked.

Today we announce the second feature in our bag of tricks - the travelling FedCirc.us search engine.  By following the steps below, you'll be able to search the FedCirc.us site from anywhere on the web.

The best part is the simplicity -- 5 easy steps (4 for most people).  Five minutes tops.

1.  Make sure you're using either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.0 as your browser.  If you're not, download the latest IE here or Firefox here (both are free).  For the record, FedCirc.us is optimized for Firefox.

2.  Start your browser.

3.  Visit FedCirc.us.

4.  Pull down the drop-down search box in the upper right hand corner and select "Add FedCirc.us" (in Firefox) or select "FedCirc.us" with the gold star next to it (in IE, see image at right).

5.  Surf the web.  Whenever you want to search the site, simply enter a search string in the box in the right hand corner, pull down the list, select FedCirc.us, and hit return.  You can do this from any page on the web...and you'll immediately be transported to a listing of search results from the site.

I've quickly gotten used to searching by party name or full case name as I'm reading on the web.  This little trick has changed my surfing habits for the better...it's a wonderfully efficient way to find information quickly.  We hope you find it useful as well.

As always, if you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know.  You can e-mail Matt directly at jmb @ rtipllc.com.

Enjoy!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 05:24 PM.
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January 02, 2007

A Little Something New - Fedcirc.us

Happy New Year!  – and – Happy Birthday PHOSITA! 

Wow – it is amazing to think we just stepped into 2007.  When we started PHOSITA three long years ago, we had no idea how this little project would turn out or even how long it would stay in existence.  Thanks to all of our readers for the great tips, the snarky criticisms and the amazing friendships that have occurred.  We are looking forward to our fourth year and we have a couple of new things up our sleeves to trot out down the road.

Speaking of friendships and new things, Matt, Steve and I are happy to announce the launch of FedCirc.us – the patent caselaw portal!  Built largely upon Matt’s stellar leadership and insightful writing, we have been tiddying up the tents and getting the main ring ready for y’all to come and explore.  A few folks have been testing the lines and unfurling the flags for us, but today…. well, today – WE GO LIVE!

Yes – it lives.  FedCirc.us is alive.  Visit it at http://www.fedcirc.us (and just because we have a wierd sense of humor, http://www.fedcircus.com will work, too).

Currently, FedCirc.us is a website that allows patent professionals and other patent stakeholders to access, digest and manage patent caselaw information.  The site is built on a foundation of timely, accurate, and considered reviews of patent decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Check out some of these great features:

• GimmeTen!(tm) - Get concise summaries of the last ten case reviews written...all on one page.  Bookmark it at http://10.fedcirc.us.
• Read the Latest Review - Hit this button in the left menu to immediately get the full monty on the last case review written.
• Case Data - Check out the Case Data box that appears in every case review.  There's a bunch of goodness in that box, including citation information and a link to download a .pdf of the opinion.
• Case Flags - Red flags.  Big red flags.  Believe us, you'll known 'em when you see 'em.
• Tags - Navigate the site by keywords.  Conduct legal research with your head in the tag cloud.
• Practice Alerts - We issue specific practice alerts when we detect something important.  Sign up to receive these alerts, free!
• Feature article - We're working to put together a team of authors that will publish timely and insightful analyses of the latest developments.  We'll provide more details on this soon.
• E-mail and RSS subscriptions - A lot of the FedCirc.us content is available without even visiting the website.  Go ahead and subscribe.

We're extremely excited about this project, mostly because the website is just the beginning.  FedCirc.us is merely the leading edge of the most ambitious and significant RTIP LLC (otherwise known as the Rethink(IP) guys…) project yet.  We've got a slate of informational products and services - all built around the FedCirc.us foundation of case reviews - that we'll be announcing over the next several months.

So come on by and stay awhile – we just might buy you some Circus Peanuts!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 06:49 PM.
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November 02, 2006

Flickr Interestingness Rankings Patents Released

Over at the SEO by the SEA blog, William Slawski has posted on newly published patent applications filed by Yahoo convering an implementation of the concept of “interestingness search.” 

There is a pretty good exchange in the comments between William and Thomas Hawk – a celebrated photographer on the Internet and someone who is directly involved with the Zooomr web photo service. 

Zoomr is a direct competitor with Flickr, which is now owned by Yahoo.  Presumably Zoomr may have some issues if the patents are ever issued.  As a word of caution to Thomas (and all other bloggers out there) – I would be very careful in what you say about your technology and when/how/who it was developed.   All of your comments could be used as admissions down the line.

Anyway…

While the discussion between Thomas and William follows the typical “software patent discussion framework”(TM) of outrage, more outrage, denial, and chest thumping about how “Person X, Y, Z” came up with the idea 1, 2, 4 or 100 years ago… I was pleased to notice that William and Thomas actually took some time to thoughtfully discuss what Yahoo was trying to do with its patent applications and how they fit in with the overall search and photo-sharing market out there.

My only quarrel with their discussion: like all that fall within the “software patent discussion framework”(TM) — they failed to look at the actual claims of the patent and instead debated the description that the inventor drafted.  Once again – it is the claims that control the scope of the patent, not the description directly. 

All discussion of patents or patent applications should start first and foremost with the claims… it is the claims that control.

As a taste of what to expect over at SEO by the SEA:

Flickr Interestingness Rankings Patents Released

posted @ 2:17 am in [ Social Search ] by William Slawski

I’ve posted some pictures to Flickr, but I’ve never really paid much attention to the “interestingness” rankings the site uses.

Interestingness and clustering were first used in August of last year, as announced by Stewart Butterfield on the Yahoo Search Blog and the Flickr blog.

Blog posts about Flickr’s interestingness, and a February Flickr forum post on changes to the interestingness rankings, show a lot of interest in the “secret sauce” on how photos are determined to be interesting. A couple of patent applications were published by Yahoo this week that delve into interestingness rankings, clustering of pictures, and metadata associated with Flickr images.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 12:32 PM.
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October 20, 2006

Where is Dunlap Codding and Rogers Located?

Well, our main office is located in beautiful Oklahoma City!  We also have satellite offices in Washington, D.C. and Perrysburg, Ohio. 

This post is actually a test of a new blog posting software by Microsoft - Windows Live Writer (WLW).  One of the interesting features of WLW is the ability to publish maps, like this one which was created solely within WLW.

While this is certainly a very cool feature, I still enjoy Blogjet and believe that Dmitry's efforts to introduce Version 2.0 of Blogjet will continue to push the boundaries of blogging tools available.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 03:07 PM.
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July 27, 2006

An attraction worth "checking out"

It seems everyone is a blogger these days, including librarians.  There is even a specific site for “news, commentary, and stories for and about Oklahoma Libraries.”  Fortunately, they have called attention to the Oklahoma Inventors Congress Annual Meeting being held on the OSU campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma on August 12th and reminded everyone that there is a Patent and Trademark Library located on that campus.  For those headed to Stillwater next month, the library may be an attraction worth checking out.   

If you can’t make it to the meeting, the librarians have provided other useful information and links worth looking into on their site. 

Posted by Laura Wood at 06:03 PM.
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March 13, 2006

a coup at blawg review

Opps… RTIP’rs did it again.

It was Steve, Matt and I’s pleasure to host Blawg Review over at Rethink(IP) this week – and, as usual, we couldn’t just leave things at the status quo.  We rebelled against “the man” by actually following the rules – namely, we posted the top three law blog posts of the week – no link whoring (at least not for other people) allowed in this edition.  We picked them, we posted them – now let’s hear why we are/are not wrong!

The “honorable mentions” are over at Blawgr – our community blogging portal for legal professionals.  So, once you have been over to Rethink(IP), you should wander over to Blawgr and read the remaining links — lots of wholesome goodness awaits you over there as well.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 10:37 AM.
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December 06, 2005

colin samuels hosts blawg review #35

Wow!  Colin Samuels has put together what is easily the best Blawg Review of them all over at his Infamy or Praise blog.

As Colin sets out, the phrase “infamy or praise” is from Dante’s Inferno and this week’s Blawg Review is a tour of law blogs categorized according to the differing planes of hell.  Why is this so topical, well….

“In addition to the fact that it provided the name of your host's blog, Dante's masterwork is an appropriate basis for this week's Blawg Review for another reason (and no, I wasn't going to say that all lawyers belong in Hell). Prior to Dante's work in the early years of the 14th century, the divisions in poetry between those with "high" topics and language and those with "low" topics and language was quite strict. Wikipedia provides a good characterization of Dante's impact on this status quo:

Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar language of Italian, not Latin as one might expect for such a serious topic.

I cannot think of a better analogue to legal blogging! What are legal blogging generally and Blawg Review specifically if not the discussion of serious subjects in more accessible forums and in more accessible language?”

 

 

 

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 10:08 AM.
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October 16, 2005

BlawgThink 2005 - Mandatory Cool Thing To Do

Join leading legal bloggers in Chicago on November 11 and 12 for BlawgThink 2005: a bold new approach to learning about legal blogging. This first of its kind two-day has been organized by friend Matt Homann, a lawyer, futurist and author of the the [non]billable hour blog.  The event brings together the largest group of legal bloggers ever assembled for two days of education, innovation, fellowship and fun.

The first day of BlawgThink will feature structured educational sessions led by top legal bloggers covering basic and advanced topics, including blogging how-to, blogging tools, marketing tips, content strategies, RSS and ethics. Each session will have ample time for questions, demonstrations, and hands-on practice.

The second day of BlawgThink, in true LexThink! fashion, belongs to the attendees. Though there will be some planned activities, much of the agenda will be determined by the audience. By combining collaborative brainstorming techniques with small group discussion groups, BlawgThink give you an unparalleled opportunity to meet, learn from, and interact with the best and most innovative legal bloggers in the country.

Matt encourages you bring your ideas, enthusiasm, and creative energy and the program organizers will come up with cool ideas to improve your blog, increase your blogging "ROI" and change the legal blogging landscape.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 10:49 AM.
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September 30, 2005

How to Understand Your Lawyer - Interpreting "Patentese"

Do you know what the heck your patent attorney means when you hear that there was a rejection based on prior art, or that there was an objection to the specification, or even that your patent claims were allowed? Hard as we try, we still often lapse into speaking "patentese" (a specialized field of "legalese"). You should never be afraid to ask your lawyer to explain. After all, they work for you. But, if you are hesitant to point out our failure to actually speak English, you needn't suffer any longer.

Patently-O: Patent Law Blog to the rescue. Dennis Crouch recently posted links to a few patent glossaries, claiming that they are "a great place to start if you are a new lawyer, agent, or paralegal trying to learn the trade." The only thing I would change about this statement is to include a patent-seeker or a patentee in this group of people.

Posted by Melody Wirz at 09:18 AM.
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September 07, 2005

ip memes' newest members

IP Memes will include a couple of new contributors in the next issue due out on September 26 - namely, Matt Buchanan of the Promote the Progress blog and myself.

If you're not familiar with The TechnoLawyer Community...you should be. TechnoLawyer provides a number of great newsletters (including IP Memes), and a forum where "technolawyers" can ask one another questions about technology (i.e., "has anyone every used _______ and what did you think about it?"). It is an excellent resource for all tech attorneys, and has an archive which I have searched from time to time with questions (what scanner to purchase, whether I should upgrade to the latest version of __________, etc.). The best part? It is free. Try it, if you don't agree you can easily unsubscribe.

Over the past year Steve Nipper of The Invent Blog has been writing the IP Memes newsletter. IP Memes is described as “a weekly newsletter that explores emerging technology-related intellectual property issues — or “memes” as we call them. Think of it as your coal-mine canary for intellectual property issues.”

Steve has been doing a solid job this past year - Matt and I are both thrilled to be asked to join him to continue IP Memes' tradition of excellence and join some of the IP community's finest commentators and thinkers - including Dennis Kennedy, Denise Howell, Gail Standish, Kevin Grierson and Kurt Calia - all of whom, are IP Memes alumni.

Click the image above to be taken to the signup form for IP Memes and yes, it is just another example of the collaboration taking place over at Rethink(IP). You never know where we might "pop up" next.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 08:06 PM.
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September 06, 2005

Carnival of the Capitalists is up at rethink(ip)

Carnival of the Capitalists is up and hosted by Rethink(IP) this week - so stop on over and have a look.  It is pretty darn good, if I may say so myself.

While you are at it - the Blawg Review is hanging out over at Blawg Wisdom It is well worth the look as well.

Enjoy all the carnival goodness out there!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 08:13 AM.
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August 31, 2005

Blog Comments May Cause Problems For Bloggers

Blog comments are part of the beauty of blogs. They allow different points of view to be shared, providing full analysis of various issues. However, comments can be out of line, obscene, or even worse: they can be spam!

To combat the undesirable comments, many blog owners have adopted some sort of filter in their blog comments. But, this may not be enough. The Wall Street Journal explores the issue today in Blogger Faces Lawsuit Over Comments Posted by Readers.

More than one blogger has been sued. Not for the blog post, but for the resulting comments by readers of the blog. While operators of computer message boards and mailing lists are not responsible for the content of statements posted by others, the "law of the blog" may be different. When allegedly defamatory statements are posted by others, blogs may fall within the purview of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. While this looks promising for the bloggers, there is a real possibility that they will get caught by the intellectual property aspect of the comments.

In at least one lawsuit (in Nevada), the plaintiff has claimed that the comments contained proprietary trade secrets. In this case, the Communications Decency Act is of little utility. The act has "no effect on intellectual property law," so the publication of trade secrets provided by other people may be problematic. Since the law of trade secrets varies from state to state, I can't really comment on the lawsuit in Nevada without further research. But, it seems from the complaint in the lawsuit posted on the blog that "misappropriation of trade secrets" in Nevada requires "theft, bribery, misrepresentation, breach or inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy, and/or espionage." From the little I can surmise from the blog, I don't see any overt act. Of course, I have only spent about five minutes researching the issue.

Whatever the facts are, the outcome will certainly be interesting. And, even though trade secret law is different in Nevada and Oklahoma, the precedential value will likely spill into Oklahoma. Until then, I will be watching for the arguments and the outcome of this suit.

Update 8/31/05: Stephen Nipper of the Invent Blog let us know about this link to the EFF doc on 230.

Posted by Melody Wirz at 10:20 AM.
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August 29, 2005

USPTO News and Notices Available via Email - Rethink(IP)

Responding to an overwhelming number of requests for an email subscription option, Rethink(IP) launched an email subscription feed over the weekend.

Powered by FeedBlitz (a great new RSS to email solution : tip of the hat to Matt Homann) – you can sign up over at the Rethink(IP) site or simply add your email address below:

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 09:01 AM.
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August 23, 2005

RSS at the USPTO: Even a Blind Squirrel...

Down here in the South we have a fondness for “sayings” – “Fast as a duck on a june bug” and so forth.  One of my favorites, however, is “Even a blind squirrel will find a nut once in awhile.” 

Unfortunately, that saying just doesn’t hold true for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  The Rethink(IP) team (me, Matt, and Steve) just didn’t think it was right that the USPTO only provided official news and notices via a clunky and antiquated website. 

We ranted…. we pleaded… finally, we just acted.

So – this morning we launched the first ever RSS feeds for all the USPTO official news and notices.  As per the Rethink(IP) site:

Today we launch the following four RSS feeds that mimic the categories used by the Office:
 
Official Gazette and Federal Register Announcements (feed:   http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_OG )
General news items  (feed:   http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_GEN )
Patent news items  (feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_PAT )
Trademark news items  (feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_TM )
 
A fifth feed includes ALL items for each of the four categories listed above  (feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_ALL )
 
Go ahead and subscribe.  Who knows, you might find yourself actually reading PTO news and notices on a regular basis!

We believe this Rethink(ip) project is a great example of a practical application of RSS technology and we hope it will expand the use of RSS throughout the IP community.  We also hope it will grab the attention of decision-makers at the PTO and encourage them to take a serious look at RSS.

Go on over and have a look, subscribe to a feed… learn more… and more importantly, to the USPTO, please don’t continue to be a blind squirrel. 

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 09:22 AM.
Permalink: RSS at the USPTO: Even a Blind Squirrel...

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August 22, 2005

Bigger, Better, Newer - The 'Promote the Progress' Blog Returns

I am heartened to see that my Rethink(IP) comrade, Matt Buchanan, over at the Promote the Progress blog has returned. 

Matt had been contemplating the direction of his blog these past couple of months and I am glad to see that he has settled on what I consider to be his core strengths: worldwide intellectual property legislation and policy.

According to Matt, his priorities will be first and foremost no "reblogging" thereafter followed by his commitment to the global reach and scope of intellectual property law.

Welcome back Matt!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 01:50 PM.
Permalink: Bigger, Better, Newer - The 'Promote the Progress' Blog Returns

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June 23, 2005

congratulations to Dennis Crouch and Jim Calloway

I want to take some time out from our regular postings of hilarity and lawyer malfeasance to congratulate Dennis Crouch and Jim Calloway for winning TechnoLawyer Awards this week.  Dennis won the Best Practice Area Blog Award while Jim won the Favorite Practice Management award.

Dennis’ blog – Patently-O – is the definitive patent law blog on the internet when it comes to Federal Circuit case reports.  Dennis painstakingly posts on every patent-related decision that the Federal Circuit hands down, updates us all on patent reform measures, and throws in a good dose of academic scholarship from time to time.  All this and Dennis is a relatively young associate at  McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff in Chicago.

I am especially pleased that fellow Okie, Jim, won the Favorite Practice Management award.  Jim truly deserved this award.  Whether it his blog, Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips, his prolific writings on law technology, or his excellent stewardship of the ABA TechShow – Jim is always one of the top “go to” guys when it comes to legal technology.  Those of us in Oklahoma have always known how lucky we are to have him (as Dennis Kennedy said, the Oklahoma Bar Association needs to give Jim a bonus/raise) and it is great that the rest of the legal technology community has vindicated Jim’s commitment and expertise as well.

Congratulations again to Dennis and Jim as well as the other winners. 

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 11:32 AM.
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June 15, 2005

Blogging Lawyers to Pay $50 Per Post?

According to Jim Calloway's post Kentucky Contemplates the Fate of Thier Lawyer Bloggers, "Kentucky Attorneys' Advertising Commission wants to classify [a lawyer's] blog as advertising, requiring him to do a filing and pay a $50 fee every time he does a post."

For commentary on this issue, go here. For the Business Week coverage, go here (scroll down for more comments).

Update: For a funny commentary on the situation, check out All Hands, Battlestations!, at Bulldog Legal Services E-Blog (thanks Britt!)

Posted by Melody Wirz at 09:07 AM.
Permalink: Blogging Lawyers to Pay $50 Per Post?
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June 14, 2005

Legal Guide for Bloggers

The EFF has released a Legal Guide for Bloggers. Included in this guide are sections on defamation, reporter's privilege, public records, and workplace blogging. But, the best section that interested me was Bloggers' FAQ: Intellectual Property. This section covers copying of other blogs, government documents, Creative Commons, licensing of comments, deep linking, copying of images, the DMCA, trademarks, and right of publicity. If you have any questions about intellectual property and blogging, check it out.

Posted by Melody Wirz at 10:56 AM.
Permalink: Legal Guide for Bloggers

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March 02, 2005

whose voice does your blog have?

We bloggers tend to wax philosophical from time to time: what is our voice, what mission are we fulfilling, how will we ever make enough beer money to make this whole thing worthwhile?  Maybe …. that previous sentence should read, I as a blogger tend to wax philosophical from time to time and leave the other bloggers out of it?

In any event – Dennis Kennedy has a great interview over at the Voice of the Blog site dealing with why he blogs, his “voice” and the scourge that is comment spam.  Well worth the read for anyone thinking about blogging and/or why bloggers blog. 

On a side note – Dennis also posted very nice things about PHOSITA this week about our Best Law Blog Award from the Business Blogging Awards.  Coming from Dennis – the Grand daddy Blog-o-sphere mentor to all – it meant quite a bit.  Thanks Dennis!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 07:21 AM.
Permalink: whose voice does your blog have?

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February 01, 2005

PHOSITA in January

One of the nice perks of using Feedburner to handle PHOSITA’s RSS feed is the ability to see what posts are the most popular from a “click through” standpoint.  January is gone, a new month has begun, so I thought I would recap the 10 most popular PHOSITA posts for January, 2005 (in order of popularity):

• Small Business Trends Reviews Phosita
• Patents in Iraq - Good or Bad? 
• Test Your Invention History IQ
• Study - European Firms Failing to Protect Innovations
• Talent
• You Can Take the Cocks out of Oklahoma - Or Can You?
• Attention Technophiles!
• Copyright Legislation in the New Term
• What Does Corporate Counsel Need To Know About Patents?
• Mustang Ranch Dispute

I would guess that Small Business Trends’ review ranks highly due to members of our firm checking it out, so that should be discounted – therefore, the story on Iraqi patents takes the January, 2005 prize for most popular post.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 11:41 AM.
Permalink: PHOSITA in January

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January 16, 2005

Welcome Jim!

Welcome to the blogosphere Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog!

I am a day-late and a dollar-short on this announcement, especially since Jim is a home-town blogger.  For those few of you who don’t know Jim, he is the Director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program and serves as chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2005. Jim is a phenomenal CLE speaker and frequently writes on legal technology issues, Internet research, law office management and organization and legal ethics.

Welcome to the blogosphere Jim – you’ve always been with us in spirit, now its good to have you online.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 12:49 PM.
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Welcome OKBlawg!

Welcome to the blogosphere OKBlawg!

The OKBlawg is written by James Dee Graves who began The Oklahoma Law Blog as a weblog devoted to Oklahoma law, legal issues and politics. His hope is to provide an informative forum for those interested in the developments of the legal community in Oklahoma.

Happy blogging James.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 12:38 PM.
Permalink: Welcome OKBlawg!

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November 30, 2004

patent keyword monitoring

…from the ResearchBuzz blog comes word that patent keyword monitoring is now being offered by Freshpatents.com via email as well as an RSS feed of published patent applications.  The monitoring service requires a rather innocuous free registration and the site appears to contain a significant amount of information on different classifications of patents and patent information broken out by registered agent, class etc.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 09:30 PM.
Permalink: patent keyword monitoring

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November 22, 2004

Blogs, Copyright and Fair Use

I recently got an e-mail asking me about the copyright consequences of posting an original work on a blog. The answer initially seemed easy.

Copyright protection in the U.S. is automatic. Copying without permission is a violation of the law. Authors can publish without giving up any rights.

Then, I thought a little about blogs. They often copy other blogs, without harsh consequences. Maybe this is because copying without permission is okay when it falls within the "fair use" arena. Permission isn't required for things like criticism, comment, teaching, scholarship, research, and news reporting. The determination of whether the use is fair hinges on a number of factors, including profit motive, whether education is the driving force, the amount of the work used, and the market effect.

The real difficulty in the question lies in the nature of the Internet, where most copying is done for some other use.  Blogs are a unique form of publishing. So, whether the bloggers fall within fair use really depends on how blogs are classified.  They often seem to have the purpose of comment, criticism, scholarship, research, and news reporting.  Most bloggers don't seek profit from the publication. Instead, they seek to inform the world of their opinions.  Sometimes they use only snippets of a work, but other times, substantial portions are copied.

Before everyone panics about bloggers being copyright violators, I offer a final thought. Bloggers blog because they want to share their opinion. It is common practice in the blog community for a blog entry to be about half copied material and half commentary. Maybe this common practice means that there is an implicit permission to copy works from other blogs.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to post original thoughts for a change.

Posted by at 06:15 PM.
Permalink: Blogs, Copyright and Fair Use

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November 19, 2004

how scholarly are you?

Feeling nostalgic and want to know who has been citing your early work on the ground-breaking Seattle earthworm research you conducted in 1977?  Take a wander over to Google’s newest Beta service: Google Scholar.

Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders your search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 10:31 PM.
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blogjet 1.2 update released

Blogjet, my blog posting software of choice, has released an update.

This version includes long-awaited image resizing, file attachments, extended entries, excerpts and keywords, a brand new code editor with syntax highlighting and better code completion, easier account switching, XML-based drafts, typographic characters and autoreplacement of smilies, full XHTML support. Detailed release notes will be posted shortly.

I highly recommend this product as it also includes a Newsgator Outlook “Blog This” feature as well as a Mozilla-friendly right-click “Blog This Page” feature.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 09:25 PM.
Permalink: blogjet 1.2 update released

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November 08, 2004

EPO and Living Inventions

Congratulations to our very own Kati McClatchey on the publication of yet another article entitled THE EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE AND THE EUROPEAN PATENT: AN OPEN AVENUE FOR BIOTECHNOLOGISTS AND "LIVING INVENTIONS."

Kati discusses "the function and jurisdiction of the European Patent Convention (EPC) treaty and the European Patent Office (EPO) that the treaty established.  The EPO issues a single patent that is enforceable in as many countries as the applicant wishes to designate.  This makes obtaining patent protection in many European countries not only possible but extremely efficient as well.  While the requirements for a European patent are similar to the requirements for a United States patent, Ms. McClatchey highlights some important distinctions of which biotechnologists should be aware."

Check it out at www.okjolt.com.

Posted by at 04:39 PM.
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November 03, 2004

IP FIVE-BY-FIVE - THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

Matt Homann over at the The [Non]Billable Hour blog, regularly hosts a question/answer series famously known as the  "Five-by-Five".  For each Five-by-Five, Matt solicits five experts in an area of the law to give five responses to a specific question about the law. 

The most recent episode is the IP Edition.  Matt asked five intellectual property law bloggers the question: What five things would you change about IP law and/or practice? 

Matt graciously asked me to participate and here are a couple of comments from each of the bloggers:

Stephen Nipper: You are your brother's keeper.  One of the things IP practitioners tend to do is ignore our responsibility to spend time educating non-IP attorneys as to the basics of IP law.  Lets face it, our colleagues (understandably) aren't typically very good at issue spotting when it comes to IP issues.  The result is countless pain and suffering (and much gnashing of teeth).  Solution?  Go teach a CLE to general practitioners, blog, write articles for your local bar journal, start writing a newsletter, etc.  You will be rewarded.

Douglas Sorocco: Everyone needs to take a deep breath regarding software patents.  The end of the world is not near, the seas are not going to be flooding our coastal cities and software  patents are not stifling development of new and useful tools and processes.  Software developers are simply going to have to become better business people and accept that nothing is free and patent clearance searches must be made an integral part of the development process.

Martin Schwimmer: I also think that the development of the UDRP is an astounding success in that it represents a model of dispute resolution.  There are times that a trademark owner has to walk away from the misuse of a mark in a domain because litigation will cost $50,000, but a UDRP can cost under $3000. The UDRP is not a perfect solution, but it has absolutely achieved what it set out to do.  I still do a lot of them, probably one a week.  I think the UDRP may pave the way to other forms of alternate dispute resolution for IP problems.

Dennis Crouch: Law Firm Life: Billing Requirements:  Billing expectations at most large law firms are simply unreasonable.  They disrupt family life and tend to destroy any solid mentoring program.  Today, however, I�m upset with how the long hours spent billing really cramp the ability of associates to begin to build a practice of their own.  The hour requirements were raised after the salary bump several years ago.  Now, there are rumors that another salary jump is in store for BigLaw associates.  In my opinion, rather than increasing associate salaries, firms should compete based on hours.  

Mark Partridge: Eliminate rights in gross mentality:  My second change, admittedly related to the first, would be to eliminate the "rights in gross" mentality. By this, I mean the notion that a trademark creates an absolute and exclusive right. One sees this tendency on both sides of the rights issue. A trademark owner may have the view that no one else may use its mark for any purpose. The junior user may believe there is no infringement if the mark it adopts is not identical to another's trademark.  Both views are mistaken, of course. The rationale for protecting trademarks is preventing deception of the public, not to protect a right in gross. Again the effect of the marks in question on the public mind is critical. Some uses of another's mark are permitted because they do not deceive the public. The use of nonidentical marks on related goods may still be an infringement because they deceive the public.

These are the comments I found most interesting, you should visit The [Non]Billable Hour blog for the full posts.  Each authors' blog can also be seen on the web: Nipper, Sorocco, Schwimmer, Partridge, Crouch, and Homann 

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 04:41 PM.
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October 28, 2004

patented wine in a can

Tip a Merlot for me?  Double fisting a Cabernet and a Zinfandel?  What is the world coming to -- wine in a can?

According to Packaging World Magazine, Barokes Wines, of Melbourne, Australia, has moved its marketing of its patented wine (Patent Cooperation Treaty "PCT" application here) in a can throughout Southeast Asia and is now looking to expand into the European and North American markets.

Barokes has developed Vinsafe, a patented process that includes the specifications for the premium wine, can lining and filling requirements. Since 1997, it has been packing a Cabernet-Shiraz and a Chardonnay in 250-mL aluminum cans that can produce a shelf life of up to five years. It also packs sparkling versions of those varietals.

Barokes is also getting into the trademark spirit, with such marks as: RTDW (ready to drink wine) and VINSAFE.

If you are interested in bringing this culinary delite to America go to their appropriately named website: www.wineinacan.com

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 08:21 PM.
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October 11, 2004

new biotech blawg

Take a look at Law Under the Microscope - a new biotech legal blawg/blog written by Cecelia ("Cece") A. Gassner of Boise, Idaho.

Welcome Cece!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 05:46 PM.
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September 18, 2004

where to search for worldwide patent information

Thanks to Navigating the Patent Maze for this link to a terrific site that aggregates the different National patent offices and organizations that provide access to patent information and/or archives.

Just made my searching way easier -- thanks for the tip to this useful resource!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 06:17 PM.
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September 12, 2004

patent issuance/publication RSS feeds

I'm back!  Rested, check.  Re-energized, check.  Ready for the stacks in my office, no-no-no!

To kick things off -- GrepLaw has a useful post on specific RSS feeds (from Varchars, previously blogged by PHOSITA) that aggregate and publish the issuance of patents to specific companies, namely:

• Apple Computer Patents,
• Apple Computer Applications,
• Google Patents,
• Google Applications,
• Microsoft Patents,
• Microsoft Applications,
• Yahoo patents, and
• Yahoo applications. 

RSS feeds are beginning to be more and more useful to keep track of patent information for both practitioners and clients.  While Varchars tool is quite useful, it is somewhat difficult for a non-computer techie to implement.  Therefore, the PTO needs to be encouraged to develop RSS tools to supplement its already useful website to bring keyword searching, company tracking and classification tracking (for example) into the RSS world.  It would be a fantastic tool and would make those of us who used to read the paper Gazettes envious!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 08:16 AM.
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August 16, 2004

wicked cool waste of time

....ahhh, I mean wicked cool web-link visualizer.

Thanks to Josh Rubin over at Cool Hunting for the link to TouchGraph GoogleBrowser.

Enter in a URL and you get a 3D visualization of all the incoming and outgoing links to that site. Click on one of the sites listed, and it reconfigures that sites links as well.  Zoom in, zoom out and look at the data from different zoom angles.  Some of the maps make for interesting graphical elements as well.

DCR's connections (DCR is yellow "Du" -- view zoomed out with short names for clarity)

Who are you connected to?

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 10:59 PM.
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July 27, 2004

Bizblog Wiki Directory

Thanks to Diva Marketing for the link to A Penny For who is developing a bizblog directory wiki. At the moment there are over 81 blogs listed, including PHOSITA.

It is an interesting read and a good place to refresh and reinvigorate your reading list for the dog days of summer.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 11:04 PM.
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July 23, 2004

FURL IT AND BE FOREVER FURLED

It's late and it has been a light blogging week so I thought I would end the workweek with a post about my new favorite tool -- both for blogging and legal web page archiving.

Drumroll please..........

Ladies and Gentlemen, please take a look at Furl.

Furl is like bookmarks on steroids -- it allows you to save a "bookmark" or "favorite" webpage, categorize it, archive it and keep it in on off-site (or off-computer) site for later perusal. I want to thank Amy Gahran over at Contentious (great site - check it out) for the pointer. Amy appears to be using Furl quite regularly as a "pre-blogger" resource -- i.e. as a means of saving webpages that may be of interest or may serve as a blog entry sometime in the future. Amy points out that by "Furling" a webpage, you are able to save the website as you see it at that point in time -- which is very useful when the page may change regularly.

Furl also lists he most recent Furled webpages (quite interesting) and allows you to share your Furled webpages. In a collaborative process Furl appears to be quickly becoming indispensable.

Go on - Furl it!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 10:25 PM.
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July 14, 2004

MEGA LAWYER NEWS RESOURCE

Interesting new resource over at Lawyer News.com.  They are offering reciprocal links as well as a press release resource for lawyers.  Looks very promising and helpful - as well as a serendipitous read of what is happening in the legal arena.  Now if they would only offer an XML/RSS feed.  Please?

Thanks to Ernie the Attorney for the pointer.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 10:31 PM.
Permalink: MEGA LAWYER NEWS RESOURCE