FOR RELEASE: December 16, 2010 Contact: Richard T. Kaplar The Media Institute 703-243-5700 Washington, Dec. 16, 2010 – Richard M. Bates of The Walt Disney Company was elected to the Board of Trustees of The Media Institute at the board’s annual meeting today in Washington. Bates is senior vice president of government relations for [...]
Professor Peter S. Menell Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology University of California at Berkeley School of Law December 14, 2010 When the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Bilski v. Kappos 18 months ago, the patent community was galvanized. In view of the murky and conflicting reasoning of the Court’s software patent cases from [...]
Joined with 22 other organizations in an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Viacom v. YouTube. The brief urges the court to overturn a district court decision that would immunize an Internet business that intentionally relies on stolen copyrighted content to build its audience. The brief argues [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law December 6, 2010 The Patent Act provides that an issued patent “shall be presumed valid,” but the statute fails to specify exactly how strong that presumption should be, and it fails to specify against exactly what evidence that presumption should weigh. The Supreme Court last week granted cert [...]
Prof. Jim Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law November 23, 2010 When an individual makes a music or movie file available for downloading by others, without the permission of the copyright owner, is that an infringing act? Or does infringement take place only when the file is actually downloaded? This thorny copyright issue is [...]
Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law October 28, 2010 In the Paleolithic period of analog copies and communications, the boundary between the exclusive rights of reproduction and public performance was clearly marked. The former right involved the making of physical copies; the latter did not. Rather it entailed the direct apprehension of [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman, UCLA School of Law November 2, 2010 Over the last few weeks, I have been thinking a lot about Michael Heller’s engaging popular-press book, The Gridlock Economy.1 The book popularizes a concept that Heller has championed in his scholarship for years: the worry that, when it comes to property rights, too many [...]
Professor Peter S. Menell Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology University of California at Berkeley School of Law October 20, 2010 Prior to the emergence of peer-to-peer technology, the Copyright Act’s distribution right was largely dormant. Most enforcement actions were premised upon violations of copyright’s reproduction right. The relatively few cases invoking the distribution [...]
Groups and Schools Around Country Will Recognize Free Speech and Press FOR RELEASE: >October 14, 2010 Contact: Richard T. Kaplar The Media Institute 703-243-5700 Arlington, Va., Oct. 14, 2010 – National Freedom of Speech Week (NFSW) is set to kick off next Monday, Oct. 18, and will run through Sunday, Oct. 24. A wide [...]
Prof. Rodney A. Smolla, President, Furman University October 5, 2010 A question that has long vexed courts and commentators is the extent to which First Amendment principles that heavily disfavor the issuance of prior restraints ought to apply, with either full force or diminished force, when injunctions, including preliminary injunctions, are sought to protect intellectual [...]