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
Single Mother Ordered to Pay RIAA $1.92M for File-Sharing 24 Songs
2009-06-19 17:43:00 I have previously blogged about Jammie Thomas-Rasset. In 2007, a Minnesota jury awarded the RIAA a judgment against the 32 year old single mother of four, to the tune of $222,000. When a federal jury heard her case in 2007, it hit Thomas-Rasset with a seemingly astronomical $222,000 judgment. After reviewing the case, the judge ... More About: File Sharing , Songs , File , Mother , Single
The Little Black Book For Lawyers
2009-06-16 16:34:00 The Importance of Marketing I remember way back when I first got out of law school. I had no idea how important marketing was. I figured, just be the best lawyer in the world and the world will beat a path to your door. Soon I learned “What good is being the best lawyer in the ... More About: Lawyers , Book , Black , Black Book
Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Digital Natives
2009-06-11 16:44:00 Who are Digital Natives?Marc Prensky coined the term “Digital Natives” back in 2001. Digital Natives are people who grew up immersed in technology. They never knew a time before personal computers or recorded television. While most people born after 1980 qualify as Digital Natives, some born even earlier may qualify, depending upon their immersion ... More About: Things
Vote For Best Patent Blog
2009-06-03 19:47:00 If you enjoy reading this blog, you should seek the advice of a trained medical professional. Before you do however, take a second to visit Gene Quinn’s IPWatchdog.com blog and vote for your favorite patent blog. BlawgIT is not ad-sponsored. It is fueled solely by my unmitigated narcissism. If you have enjoyed the ride and ... More About: General , Blog , Vote , Patent
TiVo Shares Jump 50% on Patent Win
2009-06-03 17:57:00 Bad news for all you couch potatoes out there. If you have Dish Network, you may no longer be able to use your digital video recorder to rewind programs while you watch them. All those Larry the Cable Guy jokes that went over your head the first time. Gone forever. In addition to causing a ... More About: Tivo , Jump , Shares , Patent
Appelate Court Slashes Patent Award By $87M
2009-06-02 17:06:00 The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) cut a 2007 $226M patent infringement award by $87M Monday. The case, Dupuy v. Medtronic, involved infringement of United States patent 5,207,678 by Medtronic’s Vertex line of pedicle surgical screws. The CAFC cut $77.2M from the judgment relating to lost profits from the sale of related, ... More About: Award , Patent
United State Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Bilski (business method) Pa
2009-06-01 18:23:00 The United State s Supreme Court has taken the unusual move of agreeing to review the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC) decision in In re Bernard Bilski (In re Bilski). What might this mean for the future of business method patents? While I cannot see into the future, a little look in to ... More About: Business , Grants
Vote BlawgIT - Best Patent Blog
2009-05-28 22:30:00 Gene Quinn of IPWatchdog.com has compiled a list of the Top 50 Patent blogs and has sent out a call on the interwebs for everyone to vote for their favorite patent blog. Whether you have been reading BlawgIT since inception in 2003, or just recently became a fan, now is your chance to show your ... More About: Blog , Vote
Top 5 Myths About Patents
2009-05-28 17:35:00 Over seventeen years of drafting patents I have run across a lot of misconceptions about patents. Unfortunately, I sometimes hear them from would-be clients, crushed to learn their misunderstanding has cost them the chance to patent their inventions. Patent law is complex and constantly changing. Staying on top of the latest information is a full ... More About: Events , General , Myths , Patents
Social Networking and the Identity Theft Flu
2009-05-15 21:21:00 Identity Thieves Getting SmarterIdentity thieves are savvy. They learned long ago that obvious grabs for your personal information garner far fewer suckers than a more subtle grift. One of the more recent inventive schemes is abusing social networks by turning the scam into a game. According to PC World’s blog, scammers are now leveraging your ... More About: Social , Social Networking , Networking , Identity Theft , Theft
The Pirate Bay - When Big Business and the Judiciary Are One in the Same
2009-04-25 02:56:00 The Copyright Case Heard ‘Round the World As you may have heard last week, a Swedish judge meted out Draconian punishments to four individuals accused of running The Pirate Bay website. What you may not have heard was that, according to a post in this week’s Torrent Freak, the verdict in one of the biggest online ... More About: Business , Big Business , Judiciary , The Pirate Bay
Easter Patents
2009-04-09 23:54:00 For some reason, people cannot get enough Easter patents. Last year’s post on Easter Patents brought ten times my normal traffic. For that, I would like to extend my gratitude. Not that I would ever want to meet up with this apparently rather odd and eclectic Easter patent crowd in person, but I do enjoy ...
All Media is Social Media
2009-03-30 19:51:00 Social Media You say you don not need to worry about Social Media because you do not use it? Whether you like it or not, if you are not careful, you just might find yourself an unwilling Social Media chew toy. “Social Media,” a buzz word for several years, has resurged with platforms like Twitter . What ... More About: Social
Is Your Teenager Sexting?
2009-03-15 20:25:00 Sexting Sexting is the latest phenomenon getting teenagers into trouble. It can lead to shame, humiliation, cyberstalking, bullying, felony criminal charges, sex-offender registration and even suicide. Sexting involves sending lewd text or pictures electronically to someone over a mobile phone or computer. Sexting often starts with a teenage girl sending a nude or semi-nude picture of ... More About: Teenager
Top 10 Ways To Get Fired By Your Lawyer
2009-03-04 23:13:00 Fired by your lawyer? Seems like an odd concept. Won’t a lawyer take any client willing to pay? Indeed some will. The best ones will not. Life is simply too short. If you treat your lawyer like a commodity, you run the risk of losing the most important part of the attorney/client relationship. Even if ... More About: Lawyer , Fired
Don?t Treat Your Lawyer Like a Button
2009-02-21 22:36:00 Recently, User Interface Engineering posted an insightful article on how a company generated additional revenue by adding a single button to its website. The company had been requiring customers to provide an email address and create a password before making a purchase. The thinking was that the registration would allow new and returning customers ... More About: Lawyer , Button , Treat
Top 25 Patent Blogs
2009-02-20 16:41:00 Gene Quinn of IPWatchdog has painstakingly combed Technorati for the top ranked patent blogs. He personally reviewed all of the blogs to weed out those which only occasionally discussed patents. Per Gene, all the following patent blogs easily rate in the top 1% of all blogs on the Web indexed by Technorati: Patent ly-O - ... More About: Blogs
Do I Need a Patent?
2009-02-16 16:51:00 Ask a patent attorney whether you need a patent and he or she will likely stare at you like you just asked them if they need a new Jet Ski. Despite possessing a wealth of knowledge about what patents are and what they do, most patent attorneys simply do not have enough information to determine ... More About: Patent
Top 10 African American Inventors
2009-02-12 16:25:00 In honor of Black history month, I have compiled a list of what I think, are the top African -American inventors of all time. I have also included a representative patent along with each inventor. Since Thomas L. Jennings became the first African American to receive a patent in 1821, black inventors have made enormous contributions ... More About: Inventors , African-American
Top 10 African American Inventors
2009-02-12 16:25:00 In honor of Black history month, I have compiled a list of what I think, are the top African -American inventors of all time. I have also included a representative patent along with each inventor. Since Thomas L. Jennings became the first African American to receive a patent in 1821, black inventors have made enormous contributions ... More About: Inventors , Top Ten
Almost nothing has been invented yet ?
2009-02-11 19:20:00 People continue to erroneously attribute the following quote to former Director of U.S. Patent Office, Charles H. Duell: “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Far from everything having been invented, we are only scratching the surface. The more we invent, the more others expand upon those ideas. We are continuously standing on the shoulders ...
Almost nothing has been invented yet ?
2009-02-11 19:20:00 People continue to erroneously attribute the following quote to former Director of U.S. Patent Office, Charles H. Duell: “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Far from everything having been invented, we are only scratching the surface. The more we invent, the more others expand upon those ideas. We are continuously standing on the shoulders ...
The Best Lawyer in the World
2009-02-10 21:09:00 I have written several posts on how to choose the best lawyer in the world. Since that time, lawyers have been posting information about themselves faster than they ever have before. The quest can at times seem overwhelming. To make the search easier, I recommend dividing it into two parts: 1) obtain recommendations; and 2) ... More About: World , Lawyer , The World
The Best Lawyer in the World
2009-02-10 21:09:00 I have written several posts on how to choose the best lawyer in the world. Since that time, lawyers have been posting information about themselves faster than they ever have before. The quest can at times seem overwhelming. To make the search easier, I recommend dividing it into two parts: 1) obtain recommendations; and 2) ... More About: World , Lawyer , The World
ESPN Threatens to Take Down the Internet
2009-02-06 22:27:00 It may seem like an overstatement of the issue, but it is not. Even if ESPN fails at singlehandedly taking down the internet, the mechanisms it seeks to set in place most certainly will. Most troubling is that people will not even know it is a problem until it is too late to do anything ... More About: Internet , The Internet , Espn
ESPN Threatens to Take Down the Internet
2009-02-06 22:27:00 It may seem like an overstatement of the issue, but it is not. Even if ESPN fails at singlehandedly taking down the internet, the mechanisms it seeks to set in place most certainly will. Most troubling is that people will not even know it is a problem until it is too late to do anything ... More About: Internet , The Internet , Espn
Will the Supreme Court grant Bilski cert.?
2009-01-30 00:07:00 In my last post on the Bilski case I noted that The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) is pretty much the ?supreme court? of patents. The reason I wrote “pretty much” is that the Supreme Court is still the Supreme Court, and may overrule the CAFC at its discretion. In response to the ... More About: Grant , Cert
Will the Supreme Court grant Bilski cert.?
2009-01-30 00:07:00 In my last post on the Bilski case I noted that The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) is pretty much the ?supreme court? of patents. The reason I wrote “pretty much” is that the Supreme Court is still the Supreme Court, and may overrule the CAFC at its discretion. In response to ... More About: Grant , Cert
Six Things Your Company Needs to Know About Internet Law
2009-01-27 19:04:00 Few companies know as much as they should about Internet law. Every company runs across its share of scammers, disgruntled employees and lawsuits. How often a company sidesteps trouble and how often a company gets left holding the bag, often comes down to which side knows more about the laws affecting the Internet and which ... More About: Company , Things
Six Things Your Company Needs to Know About Internet Law
More articles from this author:2009-01-27 19:04:00 Few companies know as much as they should about Internet law. Every company runs across its share of scammers, disgruntled employees and lawsuits. How often a company sidesteps trouble and how often a company gets left holding the bag, often comes down to which side knows more about the laws affecting the Internet and which ... More About: Company , Things 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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