Stanford Center for Internet and Society

I’ve just posted my paper on information as IP subject matter. The paper addresses some basic questions about the idea of property-like rights in “information” at the abstract level. Beyond theory, the conception of information developed there has various applications to a host of more specific questions of IP law, e.g., copyright policy and judicial interpretation of statutory subject matter provisions. Comments are welcome.

I have seen several posts (here, here, and also here) that discuss a recent patent infringement lawsuit filed late November to the DC District Court. Bloggers find this infringement action quite unusual, and I agree on that. The case of Global Findability v. Summit Entertainment (original complaint available here) concerns a movie called “Knowing” starring Nicolas Cage as a genius MIT professor who decodes series of numbers delivered from divine sources. Decoding these numbers provides information about future catastrophic events, including their exact geophysical location and even the number of victims.

The long-awaited Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) was filed yesterday. The relevant documents (including the new version of the settlement and a summery of the main changes) are available here. As someone who was looking into the international law aspects of the settlement recently, one of the first places for me to look was the new definition to a “Book”, which now reads as follows:

It was brought to my attention that the German high court decision on copyright and music sampling I had previously blogged on here received a fresh English translation that is now available online. (Thanks Tom Braegelmann!) It provides a highly detailed and careful exposition of the legal situation in Germany concerning music sampling and copyright law. As explained in the translators’ note:

I simply could not resist sharing this one, for those who don’t check IPKat regularly. Apparently, transformativeness is not only a big deal in copyright fair use law, but also in tort claims for misappropriation of celebrities’ name and likeness (aka the right of publicity).

In the copyright context, at least, the underlying work – i.e., the work that is being sufficiently transformed (or not) by the defendant - must be original in the first place in order to give rise to a legal action. Would Paris Hilton’s pitch “That’s hot” qualify? Obviously not. But when Paris says “That’s hot” – then, folks, we have some heavyweight first amendment issues coming our way…

Copyright treatise’ author and, for the past few years, Google’s copyright counsel William Patry has recently published a new book with Oxford University Press bearing the title “Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars”.

I was among those who deeply regretted (though fully understood) Mr. Patry’s decision to discontinue his popular blog on copyright about a year ago. Therefore, I was particularly delighted to learn that Patry has decided to start a new blog devoted to his new book.

Calls to better safeguard users' privacy online and improve protection of personal data on the Internet are commonplace. The concerns about privacy issues are sometimes coupled with demanding higher legal standards of protection pertaining to access and use of personal data obtained over the Internet by third parties, may they be the government and its agencies or private entities that collect and use personal data for commercial purposes. Professors Michael Birnhack (Tel Aviv University) and Niva Elkin-Koren (University of Haifa) have just posted a new and highly interesting study that addresses questions of compliance with privacy regulation in Israel.

Today the Supreme Court reportedly resolved not to hear the appeal on the Second Circuit’s Cablevision decision. This denial comes shortly after the Court has received the U.S. Government's brief recommending to reject the petition.

Patrícia Akester from the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge has just published a new study on DRM. Here’s the abstract:

Pam Samuelson offers some interesting reflections on the Google book search agreement. Her warnings are worth listening to. Prof. Samuelson is quite critical about the agreement and the new creature it contemplates- the Book Rights Registry (BRR).