Cairns Blog

Food IP: Hummous v. Hummus

New York Times has a story today about the battle between Lebanon and Israel over "Hummus."  Here's the story from Ha'Aretz

My Life. My Card. No, Wait, Not Your Life, Says Amex.

American Express is getting in on the crowdsourcing philanthropy act by hosting a new initiative, Members Project.  Propose good-for-the-world projects, vote on the projects of others, and Amex will dole out $2.5 million in funding to support the winning ideas.

Amex touts the project with the tag line: "Your Ideas. Your Decision. Our Money."  Sounds all to the good.  But Joe Merante, Institute for Information Law Student Research Fellow, read the fine print. 
Turns out that "your ideas," once submitted to the website, become Amex's ideas.  Not a license.  Not a right to reprint.  Not permission to put you and your project in their commercials.  No, an irrevocable assignment of all rights such that .

You irrevocably assign to American Express all rights (including copyrights) in any ideas or expressions of ideas that you provide on or through the Project Site, including without limitation the Project Submission and all comments, suggestions, graphics, ideas (including product and advertising ideas), and other information or materials you submit on the Discussion Boards and otherwise on or through the Project Site (collectively, "User Content"), all of which will become and remain the exclusive property of American Express, including any future rights associated with such materials.

Becomes a little difficult to do good for the world when you can no longer use your own plan to "Spare Change for Clean Beaches," and have the specter of an Amex lawsuit hanging over your head if you use "Palmetto Biodiesel," or "My Simple Rule for Better Health."

David Johnson Spearheads Virtual Company Legislation

Vermont is now on the path to becoming "the Delaware of the Net."  Professor David Johnson and a team of New York Law School students  helped to draft the nation’s first legislation that will make it easier to form and operate companies online, creating new opportunities for distributed work and innovation via the Internet.  The Governor of Vermont recently signed Digital Corporate Transactions H.0458 into law.  Johnson’s work with the State of Vermont is part of a larger project to foster a new type of economic production by allowing flexible collaboration among self-selecting, transient online groups.

Imagine a group of people all around the country who want to find a way to share their collective expertise and start a consulting practice together without meeting face-to-face?

Imagine people from around a neighborhood who already know each other face-to-face and want to have a way to open a bank account without the expense and hassle of a full-blown corporation?

Imagine the team that seeks the limited liability protections of the corporate form but wants to contribute know-how not capital to form an entity?

Vermont may be the answer for these digital age entrepreneurs.

Alison Clarkson  introduced the  "Digital Corporate Transactions" (H.0458) into the Vermont house.  It was subsequently integrated into "H.0888, Miscellaneous Tax Documents."  Governor Jim Douglas signed the bill into law on June 6, 2008.

Professor Johnson and his team of students at New York Law School’s Institute for Information Law & Policy endeavor to foster a new type of economic production by allowing flexible collaboration among self-selecting, transient online groups.

They drafted legislative provisions and also analyzed the tax implications of the pending legislation.  In addition, they have started to plan for future virtual companies by drafting model operating agreements, developing the business plan for a service organization to host and support virtual companies and brainstorming the graphical interfaces for a virtual company headquarters.

The key features of a virtual company are:

--Participants in virtual companies will pool their attention and effort, not capital

--Groups can come together online to create a legal entity that has the ability to own property (including the intellectual property they create together), open a bank account and contract with third parties

--Participants will govern their own affairs, rather than relying on a Board of Directors or Officers or other forms of top down management.

Metanomics article here.

Inc. Magazine article here.

James Au and New World Notes here.

Gigacom here.

A transcript of Professor Johnson's testimony before the Vermont Legislature is available here.

A recent essay about the current status of the Virtual Companies project is available here.

Prof. Oliver Goodenough of Vermont Law School, the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School and the Vermont Bar Association provided substantial assistance.  The Virtual Company project is part of a capstone class offered by the Institute for Information Law and Policy at NYLS.  For more information visit the Do Tank.

Vermont is now on the path to becoming "the Delaware of the Net."  Professor David Johnson and a team of New York Law School students  helped to draft the nation’s first legislation that will make it easier to form and operate companies online, creating new opportunities for distributed work and innovation via the Internet.  The Governor of Vermont recently signed Digital Corporate Transactions H.0458 into law.  Johnson’s work with the State of Vermont is part of a larger project to foster a new type of economic production by allowing flexible collaboration among self-selecting, transient online groups.

Imagine a group of people all around the country who want to find a way to share their collective expertise and start a consulting practice together without meeting face-to-face?

Imagine people from around a neighborhood who already know each other face-to-face and want to have a way to open a bank account without the expense and hassle of a full-blown corporation?

Imagine the team that seeks the limited liability protections of the corporate form but wants to contribute know-how not capital to form an entity?

Vermont may be the answer for these digital age entrepreneurs.

Alison Clarkson  introduced the  "Digital Corporate Transactions" (H.0458) into the Vermont house.  It was subsequently integrated into "H.0888, Miscellaneous Tax Documents."  Governor Jim Douglas signed the bill into law on June 6, 2008.

Professor Johnson and his team of students at New York Law School’s Institute for Information Law & Policy endeavor to foster a new type of economic production by allowing flexible collaboration among self-selecting, transient online groups.

They drafted legislative provisions and also analyzed the tax implications of the pending legislation.  In addition, they have started to plan for future virtual companies by drafting model operating agreements, developing the business plan for a service organization to host and support virtual companies and brainstorming the graphical interfaces for a virtual company headquarters.

The key features of a virtual company are:

--Participants in virtual companies will pool their attention and effort, not capital

--Groups can come together online to create a legal entity that has the ability to own property (including the intellectual property they create together), open a bank account and contract with third parties

--Participants will govern their own affairs, rather than relying on a Board of Directors or Officers or other forms of top down management.

Metanomics article here.

Inc. Magazine article here.

James Au and New World Notes here.

Gigacom here.

A transcript of Professor Johnson's testimony before the Vermont Legislature is available here.

A recent essay about the current status of the Virtual Companies project is available here.

Prof. Oliver Goodenough of Vermont Law School, the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School and the Vermont Bar Association provided substantial assistance.  The Virtual Company project is part of a capstone class offered by the Institute for Information Law and Policy at NYLS.  For more information visit the Do Tank.

Another Cool Patent Thing

It seems there's another free patent pdf downloader out there.  Patent Retriever.  Any idea as to the difference?

Cool Patent Thing

Patent attorney Rolf Claessen has a free new tool to download patent documents in PDF format on the web.  It can be found here.

Yet Another DRM Disaster

Microsoft announces that it will no longer issue DRM keys for music purchased on its now defunct music service.  As CNET explains: "This means that, while former customers can listen to their music on authorized computers for as long as the hardware lasts, they won't be able to transfer songs to a new PC after that deadline."  In other words, since the DRM won't work, you'll have to throw away the song.  Good grief!

Magic and Intellectual Property

Jacob Loshin's talk in the IP Surprise Lecture Series is now up online for viewing here.

His article: Secrets Revealed, How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property Without Law is available for download here.

Larry and Eben

Today Larry Lessig gave his inaugural Change Congress speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

I was struck when listening to it by the parallels (superb delivery) and the profound differences to Eben Moglen's talk last year to the Scottish Society for Computers and Law.  Nominally, a speech about the computer industry after GPL v. 3, it was, in fact, a disquisition about freedom and the opportunity to transform law into a collaborative act of creative people.

Not surprisingly, their intellectual approaches to politics mirror their political approaches to intellectual property.

For Moglen, the crusader for open source licensing, it's not about software but about freedom and societal reform writ large.  He wants to upend the intellectual property regime as we know it and the monopoly industries that profit from it.   "If it is easily possible to give to each human being who wishes it everything of utility and beauty at low or zero cost, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything she wants?”

By contrast, Creative Commons focuses on the individual.  Give people the freedom to decide how to dispose of their own intellectual property.  Preserve property but enable the means to give away the rights that we don't want to keep.

Now Powerpoint Goes to Washington, not to get rid of Congress, but to reform it.  Get politicians to pledge not to take money form lobbyists and to commit to public financing for elections but preserve the status quo.  Use wiki-based tools to deploy an army of collaborators to keep the politicians honest and accountable (though, I must add, that is not one of the better visualization tools available by a long shot!). It is the incremental approach, the practical approach, the doable reform.  And like Creative Commons, it'll happen and will take off.

Moglen says “What the Net can do to politics in the YouTube, Wi-Fi, MoveOn, Facebook,the MySpace, FlashMob era remains to be written out in full.”  He wants to move away from a political regime where governance is based on territoriality and, instead, let affiliation drive the legitimacy of governance.  The audience of lawyers was expecting to hear about software contracts and, instead, was treated to a lecture about democracy.  His vision is reflected in the verve he has brought to the free software movement which has fundamentally transformed innovation today.

While Eben is an optimist, inclined to trust people's ability to collaborate and work together, Larry is strikingly a pessimist, full of dismay at the state of the body politic.  Yet while Eben is revolutionary, nay, evolutionary, in his take on government, Larry wants to preserve the status quo (or at least pretends to and it is one way to get things done).

My own view is that we need to combine both: Lessig's orientation toward action and pragmatism with Moglen's boldness of vision.

We need to stop viewing our institutions of government and governance as static and reified in their current form and, instead, start asking, not how to use technology to make Congress more transparent but how to use technology to make us more powerful.

I don't want to blow up Congress (well, I do but that's for another day) but to extend its intelligence by connecting the power of the network to the structure of the institution and to change fundamentally the way government works.  Michael Schudson writes about the "monitorial citizen" who, because she is so busy and overwhelmed (read: not too bright) should play the role of policing government and making it more accountable.  This is what the Change Congress movement will do using the cool tools.  It's important and useful but it's not enough and does not fully recognize the potential of ordinary people to do extraordinary things.  It's pretty pessimistic, not about Congress, but about us.

The idea that all we are good for is to blog about what happens in Washington or even to make maps and mash-ups of when and with whom the politicians went to lunch is to ignore the larger opportunity to get involved with making the science that contributes to our understanding of public health and obesity, analyzing the data about global warming, participating in the drafting of policies about these and other fields and overseeing the work of those who implement them through citizen juries assigned to every official.  I'm all for "change Congress" but then let's really change it for the better!

Golf and IP: March 10

IP SURPRISE!: IP in Unconventional Industries
March 10, 2008 | 4:30–6:00 p.m. | New York Law School, Room A900

GOLF
“Intellectual Property from Tee to Green – Applying the Art of Law to the Business of Golf”
Lecture by James H. Schnare II
Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Nicklaus Companies, LLC

Everyone knows what the “intellectual property industries” are—or do they? Intellectual property today plays a leading role in some unexpected areas. Today’s hoteliers and sommeliers need to know their trademarks and copyrights; game designers and golfers are playing with patents. The Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School presents IP Surprise!—a lecture series about the new intellectual property industries.

In his current position and as a member of Haile, Shaw & Pfaffenberger, P.A., in North Palm Beach, Jim Schnare has been responsible for all legal aspects of the planning and execution of a variety of business activities related to the sport of golf and the Nicklaus endorsement and trademarks, including golf course design, real estate development and licensing, golf equipment manufacturing, golf marketing and promotions, and brand licensing and management since 1985. During Schnare’s association with Jack Nicklaus, who was named “Player of the Century” by Golf magazine in 1986, Mr. Nicklaus has built his Nicklaus Design firm into a position of world leadership in golf course design and promotion and has been recognized for the last four consecutive years as “The Most Powerful Person in Golf” by Golf Inc. magazine for his influence upon and contributions to the sport and related industries.

Attendance is open to the public and the New York Law School community on a first-come first-served basis. Seating is limited. Please RSVP at www.nyls.edu/ipsurprise or e-mail ipsurprise@nyls.edu.

IP Surprise: IP in Unconventional Industries

Music, movies, book publishing, computer software, pharmaceuticals. Everyone knows what the “intellectual property industries” are—or do they? Intellectual property today plays a leading role in some unexpected areas. Today’s hoteliers and sommeliers need to know their trademarks and copyrights; game designers and golfers are playing with patents. Meanwhile, haute couture and haute cuisine have built innovation-intensive industries just outside the limits of formal intellectual property protection. Intellectual property is now showing up in some surprising places, and intellectual property issues are increasingly part of the daily work of counsel to a wide variety of industries. The Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School presents IP Surprise!—a lecture series about the new intellectual property industries.

RSVP required to IPsurprise@nyls.edu

Video Games

February 26, 2008 - 5:00 PM
Dr. S Gregory Boyd, Associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, will discuss how the entirety of the video game industry is supported by protection of and investment in intellectual property.

Golf

March 10, 2008 - 4:30PM
James H. Schnare II, General Counsel for Nicklaus Companies, LLC, will discuss the relevance of intellectual property to the golf industry, from celebrity lifestyle and marketing to protection of golf courses, and will identify challenges and practical solutions to the application of traditional legal theories to this unique business. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for Real Estate Studies at New York Law School.

Fashion - SOLD OUT!

March 25, 2008 - 5:00 PM
Susan Scafidi, Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and author of the weblog Counterfeit Chic, will discuss the increasing importance of intellectual property in the fashion world, trademark protection for designers, and the debate over copyright protection for fashion designs.

Comics

Closed to the public.  Students only.

Magic

April 10, 2008 - 5:00 PM
Jacob Loshin, Law Clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and author of Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property without Law, will discuss the challenges magicians face in protecting their intellectual property and the creative ways in which the magic community has adapted to those challenges.