Johnson, Eric E., The Misadventure of Copyrighting State Law (2019). Kentucky Law Journal, Vol. 107, No. 4, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3446229 – “Many states have asserted copyright over their own official state legal texts, limiting access to those materials and attempting to monetize them. This Article aims to provide helpful analysis for state officials deciding… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Intellectual Property
AAP Suit Seeks to Block Implementation of Audible Captions
Publishers Weekly – “The Association of American Publishers filed suit on August 23 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in a bid to stop Audible from moving ahead with its plans to implement its Audible Captions program. Under Captions, Audible will transcribe a book’s audio in order to create… Continue Reading
Steal This Book? There’s a Price
The New York Times – I have about 400 offers to buy illegal copies of my own work. Something is very wrong – “Most of them, it turns out, are phishing scams, asking gullible users to hand over credit card information before proceeding to their ostensibly free copy. The real theft happens elsewhere, though, according to… Continue Reading
WIPO Global Brand Database
“…The WIPO IP Portal is a new WIPO initiative aimed at harmonizing our services and simplifying your work. It is a one-stop shop for our full range of online intellectual property (IP) services. The underlying business processes will stay the same, so the way you conduct your interactions with WIPO will not change…Perform a trademark… Continue Reading
The Internet Relies on People Working for Free
Medium – Who should be responsible for maintaining and troubleshooting open-source projects? – “…It’s hard to demand that programmers who are working for free troubleshoot problems or continue to maintain software that they’ve lost interest in for whatever reason — though some companies certainly try. Not adequately maintaining these projects, on the other hand, makes the… Continue Reading
Why Angry Librarians Are Going to War With Publishers Over E-Books
Slate – “If I wanted to borrow A Better Man by Louise Penny—the country’s current No. 1 fiction bestseller—from my local library in my preferred format, e-book, I’d be looking at about a 10-week waitlist. And soon, if the book’s publisher, a division of Macmillan, has its way, that already-lengthy wait time could get significantly… Continue Reading
Appeals court rules web scraping doesn’t violate anti-hacking law
arstechnica: “Scraping a public website without the approval of the website’s owner isn’t a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an appeals court ruled on Monday. The ruling comes in a legal battle that pits Microsoft-owned LinkedIn against a small data-analytics company called hiQ Labs. HiQ scrapes data from the public profiles of… Continue Reading
Our past on the internet is disappearing before we can make it history
Lapham’s Quarterly – Please, My Digital Archive. It’s Very Sick. “Digital history isn’t history at all—until, without warning, it is. In an age in which any internet user is a creator-in-the-making, reaching a handful of virtual friends or entire corners of the web in a moment’s notice, the line between archive-worthy material and the detritus… Continue Reading
Tech Paging Big Brother: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
The New York Times – As fake and illegitimate texts proliferate online, books are becoming a form of misinformation.The author of “1984” would not be surprised. “I started browsing Orwell on Amazon after writing about the explosion in counterfeit books offered by the retailer. The fake books appeared to help Amazon by, for example, encouraging publishers… Continue Reading
The Decline of Online Piracy: How Markets Not Enforcement Drive Down Copyright Infringement
Quintais, João and Poort, Joost, The Decline of Online Piracy: How Markets – Not Enforcement – Drive Down Copyright Infringement (August 14, 2019). American University International Law Review, Vol. 34 , No. 4, pp. 807-876 (2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3437239 “This article deals with the acquisition and consumption of music, films, series, books, and games… Continue Reading
Why Do So Many Book Covers Look the Same? Blame Getty Images
Eye on Design – Meet the cast of stock image characters that grace dozens of book covers – “…The book cover design world, it turns out, has something of an all-star squad of stock and archival image that show up on book covers time and time again. James Morrison, an editor, designer, and avid reader who… Continue Reading
Can AI Hold Patents?
Law.com – Can AI Hold Patents? Quick Takes on the USPTO’s Questions About Artificial Intelligence – “Academics have been debating for a while whether machines can be inventors for the purposes of patent law. Earlier this month, University of Surrey IP professor Ryan Abbott and others upped the ante, forming the Artificial Inventor Project and… Continue Reading
