Dennis Kennedy

One of my writing outlets is the TechnoLawyer.com's IP Memes newsletter (free registration required). I'm one of five rotating contributing editors and my latest issue came out this week. It was called "Pirates, Fools, Settlements, The Noise Society — and Other Hot IP Issues." Please note that the reference to "Fools" applied to April Fool's Day and a note on that topic, and was not a comment on any of the items below.

Here are a couple of items in the issue to give you a little flavor for what we do in IP Memes:

THE PIRATE BILL — DIDN'T CONGRESS LEARN ANYTHING FROM CAN-SPAM?
They're at it again. The useful Copyfight Blog provides details and analysis of the proposed Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act (PIRATE Act) introduced recently by Senators Hatch and Leahy, with some tiny indications that the recording industry is pushing the effort. The PIRATE Act, if passed as now drafted, would, among other things, allow federal prosecutors to bring civil copyright infringements suits in cases like music file sharing over peer-to-peer networks. In light of the overwhelming failure of CAN-SPAM on email spam to date, Congress might be advised to spend more time thinking through the implications and unintended consequences of election-year legislation and less time coming up with clever names for bills.
Wired News Article; Corante Article; Senator Leahy Press Release

PRIVACY IN A NOISE SOCIETY
Nicklas Lundblad's short paper "Privacy in a Noise Society" takes a fascinating approach to privacy and IP and uses an attractive metaphor ("noise society") that might well make this paper very influential over time. From the abstract: "In this paper, an economic study of different levels of expected privacy, both individual and collective, is used to demonstrate that we live neither in a dystopian control society nor in a utopian privacy enhanced society, but rather in a noise society characterized by high collective expectations of privacy and low individual expectations of privacy. This has profound consequences for the design of privacy law, privacy enhancing technologies and the sociology of privacy." He concludes: "How do we balance freedom of speech, copyright and privacy in a noise society?"
Nicklas Lundblad Paper

THE 10 RULES OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
Universities, governments and businesses are increasingly focusing on ways to improve local economies through the commercial development of university research. The buzzword is "technology transfer." Many intellectual property law firms see tech transfer as a growth area. One of the biggest issues is to find ways to get the interested constituencies to speak the same language. This article from R & D Magazine is a big help in getting everyone on the same page. From the article, "Tech transfer is growing in industry to accelerate product development, in academia to support research efforts, and in government to commercialize developed technologies. In all of these areas, the technology purchaser often needs to heed to the warning — 'buyer beware.'" Two rules of particular interest to lawyers are #8 "Don't trivialize the legal aspects" and #9 "Understand the system." The article also contains a list of resources.
R&D Article; Technology Transfer Resources

YOU'RE FIRED™?
Will celebrity legal news be moving from criminal cases to high profile IP cases? If the attention paid to Donald Trump's efforts to trademark the phrase "You're fired!" is any indicator, we may well be following the IP adventures of prominent celebrities. In an article on FindLaw, Irving Kramer makes the first of what will probably be many analyses of the Trump trademark issues.
FindLaw Article