Blawg ITBlawg ITOngoing discussion of legal aspects of the online world. Blawg IT analyzes the very latest patent, copyright, trademark and licensing issues that affect you and your company. Blogging since 2003, Brett Trout is a registered patent attorney and author Articles
Brett Trout Selected For Inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2011
2010-09-16 10:16:00 Brett J. Trout has been selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2011 edition of The Best Lawyers in America ® in the specialties of both Information Technology Law and Intellectual Property Law. The Best Lawyers in America® publication is the oldest peer-reviewed publication in the legal profession. Since 1983, Best Lawyers® continues to be ... More About: Inclusion
Changing Your Name Is Not Enough to Escape Your Internet Past
2010-08-18 23:06:00 The Automatic Name Change Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently suggested to the Wall Street Journal that, in the future, young people may be given the opportunity to automatically change their names. Schmidt opines that for many, the name change will be necessary to distance themselves from youthful indiscretions recorded online. In an age where 75% of ... More About: Internet , Changing , Past
Virtual Parenting
2009-12-12 00:45:00 What the Fork? Video games harbor potential dangers to children. So do forks. The reason forks do not grab as many headlines is two-fold. First, all adults understand forks and ridicule those who use them to self-inflict injury. Second, parents, at least responsible parents, do not allow their children unsupervised access to forks until the children ... More About: Parenting , General , Virtual , World of Warcraft
Write Reviews on Your Blog? Better Read Up.
2009-11-29 19:16:00 Fines for Blog Reviews ? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued new guidelines (16 CFR Part 255) which have put advertisers, bloggers and other online publishers into a panic. The new guidelines, take effect December 1, 2009 and prohibit blog reviews which fail to disclose material connections between sellers and bloggers. Theoretically, under the new guidelines, ... More About: Write , Read
Luddite Patent Attorneys Are More Expensive Than You Think
2009-11-17 16:22:00 Is Your Attorney as Tech Savvy as You Are? You go to great lengths to protect your computer from hackers. But does your attorney? Hackers know all of your most important documents reside on your attorney’s computer. If your attorney is not as tech savvy as your company, who is a seasoned hacker going to ...
Bilski Oral Argument
2009-11-10 17:24:00 Bilski Yesterday oral argument took place in the Supreme Court in what could be the most pivotal patent ruling of our time. The case revolves around Bilski’s patent application for a method of hedging the risk of fuel price fluctuations associated with bad weather. State Street Back in 1998, the Supreme Court ruled in State Street ...
The Farnsworth Invention
2009-11-06 18:17:00 The play The Farnsworth Invention begins tonight at the Des Moines Community Playhouse. Why would a patent blog write about a play? Well, unbeknownst to me before last night, The Farnsworth Invention is a play about patents. It explores patentability, infringement, enablement, interference, licensing and litigation. It even pastes parts of actual patents right into ...
Carpenter Awarded Iowa 2009 Inventor of the Year
2009-11-03 16:49:00 An Overnight Success, Ten Years in the Making Tom Carpenter accomplished what every inventor strives for, but very few attain. He is a success. Over the years I have learned to meter the likelihood of a product’s success on the inventor, not the invention. From the first time I met Tom, over a decade ago, I ... More About: Iowa
Get Ready For the Real Time Web
2009-10-16 16:29:00 The Next Big ThingIn the past, when you wanted to find out more about a topic you would search Google, go to an informational Web site like Wikipedia, or read a blog on the subject. But what if you wanted more information about something that just happened, or about something that is constantly changing? In ... More About: General , Time , Real , Twitter
Slash Your Legal Fees
2009-10-05 18:56:00 What Your Lawyer Won’t Tell YouSomething you probably won’t overhear your lawyer discussing is how the recession has dried up the market for legal services. Many lawyers, who only a year ago were working and billing at unprecedented levels, now find themselves scrambling for work. Large law firms around the globe are cutting staff and ... More About: Legal , Fees , Slash
How Many Felonies Have You Committed Today?
2009-09-28 18:58:00 Harvey Silverglate Attorney Harvey Silverglate has a new book entitled Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. In it he explains how advances in technology have created a matrix of vague laws with Draconian penalties and how these laws make us all criminals. Later this week, Silvergate will testify before Congress about how ... More About: Today
Iowa Supreme Court Upholds Sexting Conviction
2009-09-18 16:50:00 Sexting Etiquette At the outset, let me impart some advice, based upon my collective analysis cyberlaw cases over the past two decades. Regardless of how many times your underage girl “friend” requests you to email her a picture of your penis, do not, let me repeat, do not email your underage girl “friend” a photograph of ... More About: Supreme Court , Iowa , Court
Moral Panics and The Copyright Wars
2009-09-17 17:39:00 The Author Reading William Patry’s latest book Moral Panics and The Copyright Wars , I found myself in the unusual position of finally agreeing with an author on the morality (or better immorality) of our current copyright system. Senior Copyright Counsel for Google (although he makes it very clear that his views are not necessarily those ...
Is Your Company?s Most Valuable Asset Unprotected?
2009-09-14 20:32:00 What is Your Company ’s Most Valuable Asset ? If you said something other than your company’s name, you might want to think again. Your company’s name, or trademark, is your interface with your customers. It is how you differentiate the quality of your goods and services from those of substandard competitors. Your name embodies all of ...
Microsoft Tries to Bully the World
2009-09-08 05:03:00 Microsoft Calls for a Single “World Patent” Last week Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez opined “In today?s world of universal connectivity, global business and collaborative innovation, it is time for a world patent that is derived from a single patent application, examined and prosecuted by a single examining authority and ... More About: Microsoft , Bully , The World
The Internet is a Cyberlaw Minefield
2009-08-31 19:22:00 Watch Your StepDoing business online can be as difficult as it is lucrative. Hiring the Web site developer, tracking orders, updating changes, ensuring supply, collecting money, etc. all require time and planning. One thing often overlooked is the legal ramifications of online business. While most business owners have a sense of what it takes to ... More About: Internet , The Internet
Do I Need a Patent?
2009-08-24 17:09:00 What is a Patent ?A patent is a piece of paper which allows you to stop other people from making your invention without your permission. There are several different kinds of patents: plant patents, design patents, provisional patents and utility patents. The patents most people are familiar with are utility patents. Utility patents cover mousetraps, one-click ...
Does Twitter own the trademark on ?Tweet??
2009-08-22 00:18:00 Sam Johnston has a great post on Twitter ’s recent trademark trouble. The following post attempts to shed a little legal light on what is a rather complex intellectual property issue. The Twitter Trademark Application On April 16, 2009, Twitter filed a federal trademark application for the trademark “Tweet .” The application covered the following three
Shut Up About Your Vacation
2009-08-19 16:22:00 The Good With the BadTwitter , Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, blogs, message boards, and other social media platforms are great ways to connect with large groups of people. Being transparent about who you are and what you do has many advantages. Transparency generates trust. It builds relationships. It also lures criminals to you. Identifying the potential dangers ... More About: Vacation , Shut , Shut Up
50 Best Patent Blogs
2009-08-11 16:18:00 Gene Quinn of IPWatchdog.com has scoured the globe for the 50 top patent blogs. He then asked his readers to vote on their favorites. Your votes placed BlawgIT within the top 10, with such powerhouse blogs as Patent lyO and IP Kat. Thank you all, and especially Chris Branstad, for your support. Here is the ... More About: Blogs
Bullying Bilski
2009-08-09 17:06:00 It is rare that so many entities can opine so uniformly negatively against a single court ruling. While they cannot seem to agree on the “right” test for patentability, nearly forty entities have filed amicus curiae briefs bashing the Transformation or Result (”ToM”) test for patentability recently adopted by the Court of Appeals for the ... More About: Bullying
Transformers v. Decepticons - Petitioner?s Brief In Bilski
2009-08-06 19:08:00 Background Petitioners Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw filed their Brief For Petitioners last week in what could be this decade’s watershed patent ruling. The patent at issue relates to a method for managing risk when buying or selling energy commodities. The law at issue is whether a process must: 1) be tied to a particular machine ... More About: Transformers
Brett Trout Selected For Inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America
2009-08-04 17:47:00 Brett J. Trout has been selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2010 edition of The Best Lawyers in America ® in the specialties of Information Technology Law and Intellectual Property Law. The Best Lawyers® publication is the oldest peer-reviewed publication in the legal profession. For over 25 years, Best Lawyers® continues to be regarded, ... More About: Iowa , Inclusion , Brett
Des Moines Developer Hits Big Time with BNO iPhone App
2009-08-03 21:57:00 For months, I have been following @BreakingNews on Twitter, staying up to date with all the latest news affecting our world. BNO News, Inc, the owner of Breaking News, currently delivers to over 1,000,000 readers world-wide. In my estimation, there has never been a faster, more accurate resource for breaking world-wide news coverage. Until now. ... More About: Pod , Iphone , Developer , Time , Hits
Before You Fire That Social Networker ?
2009-08-03 18:56:00 The Problem The Des Moines Register reports that in the past year alone, businesses have fired several workers for posting objectionable material to social networking websites. The latest incident involves a Casey’s General Stores employee the company fired for posting material to YouTube. What is and what is not “objectionable” online is in the eye ... More About: Social , Fire
Add Social Media to Your Corporate Arsenal
2009-07-28 17:18:00 The Problem If your company is online and you have not experienced a public relations problem, you soon will. The question is whether you are adequately prepared to handle it. Disgruntled customers, online trolls, security breaches and unintentional blunder can all lead to public relations problems. Unlike a public relations problem in the real world, an ... More About: Social , Media , Arsenal , Corporate
Destructive Phone Pranksters Exploit Workers
2009-07-13 21:44:00 Late Night Prank You find yourself staying in a hotel and get a late night call from the front desk. Apparently, they want you to throw your toilet out the window. Protip: Go ahead and get some independent verification before doing that. Recently, a group called PrankNET has been phoning people and businesses in a ... More About: Phone , Workers , Exploit
Talking Patents With dsm Buzz
2009-07-08 16:37:00 If you have an interest in determining whether those crank calls you have have been receiving are coming from me, now is your chance to do a voice check. Sherry Borzo of Des Moines’ own dsm Buzz has interviewed for her podcast. In it, we discuss all things patent and cyberlaw. Although I am certainly ... More About: Talking , Patents
Fair Use FAQ
2009-06-30 16:36:00 Opinions on Fair Use - Everyone’s Got One Everyone has heard of the term ?fair use.? Everyone has an opinion as to what it means. Unfortunately, very few of those people have any idea what they are talking about. And when it comes to fair use, the only thing worse than no advice, is bad advice. ... More About: Twitter , Fair Use
What Should I Use on My Trademark: ®, TM or SM?
More articles from this author:2009-06-29 22:14:00 Your company has a trademark, but what do you know about it? Does your company use one of these symbols with its trademark: ®, TM and SM? Are they required? Does it matter? What is a Trademark ?A trademark is a word, name, phrase, symbol, color, scent or sound used to identify particular goods or services as ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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