Political Bedfellows not Trademark Friendly

Living Liberally, LLC, is suing Blue State Coffee Inc. over the latter's use of the Drinking Liberally trademark. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that the trademark's use is deliberately similar to Living Liberally's Drink Liberally campagin, and in bad faith. It's seeking cancellation of the trademark as well.

Comcast's New Limits

According to Comcast, starting October 1, 2008, users will only be allowed to use 250 gigs of internet traffic per month. Normal users average 2 to 3 gigs per month. I'm wondering how this affects commercial and business users.

Records Must Remain Records

It's quite normal that in security arbitration settlements that the parties agree to expunge records. Recently, in Karsner v. Lothian the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia questioned those practices. Although in this particular case the question presented was whether a state securities commissioner had a right to intervene to halt the confirmation of the arbitration award ordering expungement (which the Court of Appeals said she had), the language and the rest of the case suggests that the Court of Appeals was sympathetic with the state securities commissioner's arguments that such an expungement order may affect the integrity of her records.

FCC Ruling on Comcast / Internet Neutrality

The FCC voted 3-2 that Comcast's policy of blocking some internet traffic for users who use file sharing software was a violation of network neutrality. Comcast sounds like they are going to appeal the ruling.

Cell Phone Termination Fees

A California Superior Court judge ruled that early termination fees for cell phone users is an illegal practice under state law. The preliminary judgement orders Nextel to pay customers some $18.2 million in reimbursement, and enjoins the collection efforts of $54.7 million. This ruling is going to affect everything from the current rates to hardware costs. Many companies use hardware discounts as an incentive to lock in long term contracts.

Subpoenas

Judge John Bates ruled that senior Presidential advisors must oblige Congressional subpoenas, going against a couple of decades of arguments re executive privledge.

Speeding Traps with GPS

What is the latest in high tech fighting of law enforcement? Using GPS technology to question radar guns is coming to the forefront in California. GPS systems can now track the velocity of a vehicle with a significant degree of accuracy and using those GPS records could be evidence against the police radar guns.

See the Ars Technica story here.

SAG Fight

The upcoming SAG strike basically centers around made-for-internet content and the rights of its union members to participate in residuals. I feel sorry for some of the actors; after all, how can you live in just a small mansion?

Table Top Fusion

Purdue found misconduct by physicist Rusi Taleyarkhan in his behaivor since 2002 when he first claimed he produced nuclear fusion. For example, he published a paper in 2006 in Physical Review Letters that claimed his 2002 was independently verified, but failed to disclose that the "independently verified" work was extensively done by him.

The Most Important Case Ever!!!!

A jury decided that Barbie and Bratz dolls are sisters and that the Bratz dolls were created at Mattel, Inc., and not MGA Entertainment. Still outstanding is whether Mattel owns the copyrights to the original Bratz design drawings, and whether the dolls infringe on the copyrights.

FCC and Indecendy

The 3rd Circuit held that the FCC overreached its bounds by fining CBS $550,000 for a "fleeting, isolated or unintended" image when Justin Timberlake accidently exposed Janet Jackson's breast.

Phone Moratorium

China has ordered a new phone moratorium, "suggesting" to companys that they should be focusing their efforts on the Olympics. At the current rate, phone companies are adding 9 million new accounts per month.

ICANN Approves New Domain Names System

ICANN approved the first sweeping changes in the 25 year old URL addressing system. But the new domains won't come cheap, with about $100,000 in costs per domain. The new process is simple. An applicant proposes the new domain, and if nobody raises an objection on grounds as racisms, trademark conflicts and similarity to another suffix, the name should be approved quickly. Also, countries will be able to have non-English characters in domain names as well.

Nigerian Scam Busted!

Edna Fiedler pleaded guilty to attempting to defraud US citizens with the Nigerian scheck scam. She made $609,000 from people who fell for it. Is there anybody who still believes these scams out there?

South Carlonia now has their own copyright

In a South Carolina Supreme Court opinion, the court ruled that a municipality has a copyright in their own forms and such copyright does not impact the state's freedom of information act. Maybe somebody forgot 28 USC 1338 which states: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents, plant variety protection, copyrights and trademarks. Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive of the courts of the states in patent, plant variety protection and copyright cases."

Dangerous Web Domains

McAfee, Inc., found that certain domains were a little more dangerous than others. For example, 19.2% of the .hk domains were dangerous, 11.8% of .cn domains and 11.75% of .info. Compare this with the most popular domain family, .com, with a little more than 5% of the sites being considered dangerous. The safest were the .gov, .jp and .au domains, each with less than .3% of sites being dangerous.

The report can be found here.

You just won the lottery!

Yahoo filed a lawsuit on May 16 against spammers who allegedly tricked consumers into thinking they won a contest sponsored by Yahoo. The major counts are under the Lanham Act, anti-spam laws as well as other state law claims. You mean that million dollar prize for which I sent Yahoo's lottery coordinator all my financial information isn't real?

Supreme Court and Govenors

The US Supreme Court decided two cases involving governors yesterday:

• Gov. George Ryan of Illinois: the Court rejected, without an opinion, his appeal of racketerring and fraud convictions.
• Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama: the Court agreed with the govenor that he could fill a county commission vacancy notwithstanding the Voting Rights Act of 1965

No More Set Top Boxes?

Sony Electronics reached an agreement with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (representing about 82% of all cable subscribers) to develop two way cable services such as pay-per-view movies without the use of the cable boxes.

I made the paper!!!

I made Joe Kollin's column in the Sun-Sentinel!

Why We're Happy

A new study from Psychological Science suggests that conservatives are happier than liberals because conservatives are, on average, more rational. It's amazing that it took a grant from the National Science Foundation just to prove that when I've been saying that conservatives are happier and more rational for years!

E-Bay v. Craigslist

The legal dispute between the companies is whether Kijiji, eBay's classified ads site, engages in a competative activity with Craigslist, which eBay owns 24% of as a result of a purchase of stock from a former Craigslist executive. Because of the launch of Kijiji in 2007, Jim Buckmaster said, "We are no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder, and wish to explore options for our repurchase." After that, according to the complaint filed by eBay, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Buckmaster "engaged in a series of clandestine transactions designed to ensure that eBay would not be able to elect a director, and to either impose new transfer restrictions on eBay or dilute its interests, and to dilute the interest of the employee holders of company stock options."

The complaint is here.

Iron Man

Terrific movie! A must-see! One thing to look out for is Samuel Jackson's cameo appearence as Nick Fury. Did anybody catch it? I may have turned away when it came on.

Copywriting Malware?

Symantec is reporting that there is a new virus floating around. What makes it unique is that there is a EULA (end user license agreement) with it that threatens "punishment" if a user violates the terms, such as looking at the source code or resell the product. Quite funny!

Government Not Responsible for What It Says

In an option by the 2nd Circuit, the court found that then EPA chief and former NJ govenor Christine Todd Whitman not liable for giving incorrect reassurances after the 9/11 terror attacks by saying that the air near the former World Trade Centers was breathable. The court said, "But legal remedies are not always available for every instance of arguably deficient governmental performance." So, let me get this straight, we can't sue our government for screwing up anymore?

http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysnative/RDpcT3BpbnNcT1BOXDA2LTExNjYtY3Zfb3BuLnBkZg==/06-1166-cv_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov:8080/isysquery/irl4e81/1/hilite