Blog
Koons’ Balloons: An Infringement Reversal?
The New York Times has an amusing article about Jeff Koons, the prominent artist whose use of pop culture imagery has made him somewhat of a successor to Andy Warhol in the contemporary art scene. Koons is accusing two businesses - a San Francisco bookstore and a...
“Kabletown is a Kind and Generous Company”
Tina Fey and the writers on NBC's hit comedy 30 Rock have gotten a lot of comedic mileage out of the proposed NBC-Comcast (or NBC-Kabletown, in the show's version) merger, but there hasn't been a lot of laughter today as the Federal Communications Commission and the...
Amazon Patents Unwanted Gift Converter
Graciously accepting ill-suited gifts and slyly exchanging or re-gifting these unwanted articles may become antiquated formalities of the past. In November, Amazon received a patent for a System and Method For Converting Gifts, US Patent No. 7,831,439 (issued Nov. 9,...
New Movement on the European Union Patent
European patents are presently granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) under the European Patent Convention (EPC), but they remain expensive for patent seekers, roughly ten times as expensive as an American patent. This expense is due in large part to translation...
UMG, A Promising But Unfinished Step
The recent UMG v. Augusto decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals provided consumer copyright advocates with plenty of reasons to celebrate. But before popping the last bottle of champagne, it would be prudent to wait and see the extent to which, if at all, the...
Shepard Fairey Settles with Associated Press
NPR News is reporting that Shepard Fairey, the prominent street artist and graphic designer behind the OBEY and HOPE posters, has settled with the Associated Press. The AP had sued Fairey, alleging that he had used without permission a photograph whose copyright was...
Open Spaces: The Decline of mySpace
The New York Times has a front page story today on the decline of mySpace, the once-popular social networking site that has now been outpaced by Facebook. As with other social networking sites, mySpace has struggled to maintain its popularity; a high-profile merger...
Students’ Cell Phone Data – Private?
With cell phone communication among teenagers rising, public school administrators are confronting new challenges such as sexting and cyberbullying, with little assistance from the legal system on how to handle these behavioral problems. While the Supreme Court has...
Criminals Beware: Be Careful What You Text
Just when you thought the police "had nothing on you," they got wise and realized you had your smart phone in your pocket. Bingo! The text messages found on the Blackberry's and iPhones of criminals can now help prosecutors build a case at 4G speeds. Gregory Diaz...
The Dead Trees Give More Shelter
The American government continues to investigate Wikileaks director Julian Assange, more than a month after the organization first released diplomatic cables to five newspapers. Prosecutors have yet to charge Mr. Assange, who has already weathered rumors of possible...
MTTLR Vol. 17.1 Available!
On behalf of MTTLR, I am pleased to announce the publication of our latest issue. MTTLR Volume 17.1 features a wide range of scholarship, from pharmaceutical patenting practices to online music pricing to the First Amendment rights of telecommunications providers. The...
The Death of the Public Domain
January 1 of each year marks the expansion of the public domain - at least in theory. When creative materials lose their copyright protection as granted by the U.S. Copyright Act, they pass into the public domain, making them free for use by anyone within the United...
Discovery of Your Facebook Profile
In Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Simply Storage Management, a U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Indiana concluded that information from social networking sites is discoverable by an employer defending a sexual harassment claim. In 2009, the...
What the FCC?! Net Neutrality and the Exception for Mobile Carriers
On December 21st, the FCC passed a report and order designed to promulgate net neutrality. The Commission opens its report with three basic rules "grounded in broadly accepted Internet norms, as well as [its] own prior decisions": i. Transparency. Fixed and mobile...
Hacktivists Crowd-Source DDoS Attacks, Luring Thousands into Felonies
How is MasterCard like the Greensboro Woolworth's? The diffuse Internet group Anonymous would have you believe they are very alike. In the past week, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have been launched against MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal in the wake of...
Is Comcast violating the “Open Internet?”
Yesterday, Net Neutrality advocates were outraged at accusations levied by Level 3 Communications Inc. against cable giant Comcast. Level 3 Communications Inc., a provider of fiber-based communications services that supports Netflix Inc.'s movie streaming service,...
International Telecommunications Union Holds Meeting, Little Changes
In October, the International Telecommunications Union held its Plenipotentiary Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico. The ITU, an international organization operating within the UN framework tasked with addressing telecommunications issues, used the plenipotentiary...
FCC Investigating Google for Street View Data Collection
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Communications Commission is investigating whether Google broke federal laws when its Street View service collected personal data over wireless networks. Google has admitted that its street mapping cars picked up...
FDA approves clinical trial using human embryonic stem cells
In November 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave clearance for Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, to commence Phase I/II clinical trials of a new therapy for Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy, an incurable form of...
Google a “Go” in Jury Selection
Worried about the current state of the legal market? Depressed about the paltry Cravath bonus scale for 2010? Terrified that your firm might be cutting back on some pricey perks? Or maybe you’re just concerned about high costs choking off access to the civil...
LimeWire Pirates: “You Can’t Keep a Good App Down.”
As mentioned in Robert Kolick’s post from November 3rd, LimeWire, once the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing program on the ‘net, was ordered to shut down via an injunction issued by Judge Kimba Wood of the Southern District of New York. Just a few weeks after...
U.S. Seizes Domain Names Linked to Counterfeit Goods and Copyright Infringement
On Black Friday, a day known to be one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the U.S. government seized the Web addresses of over 70 websites involved in alleged counterfeit good sales and copyright infringement. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)...
On the internet, relevance is worth more than privacy.
The Wall Street Journal recently announced that two U.S. companies are once again exploring a technology called "deep packet inspection" (DPI) as a means to specifically target online ads at consumers. The technology, which has come under fire in the past because it...
Google Takes Over Fashion?
Last week, Google entered the fashion world with their announcement of Boutiques.com, a fashion e-commerce site. Recognizing that the Web is not as suited to finding and buying soft goods like clothing and accessories as it is to hard goods, Google created a fashion...
Posts on the MTLR Blog are editorial opinion pieces written by student-editors of the Michigan Technology Law Review. The opinions expressed in these editorial posts are not espoused or endorsed by the University of Michigan or its Law School. To view scholarly Articles and Notes published by the Michigan Technology Law Review, please visit the MTLR home page.