BarCamp 2012 Speaker Up! Tara gave presentation tips to would-be speakers.
Last night at the Yazoo Brewery, BarCamp 2012 held its annual Speaker Up! event to encourage members of the technology community to come and present on their latest project or passion at BarCamp, which will be held in Nashville on October 20th at the Tequila Cowboy...
I Has Moar Flava: Nine Copyright Observations About the myVidster Case
Heh, He Said "Dicta" Last time, I tried to explain the main holdings from the important but maddening Flava Works v. Gunther (a/k/a myVidster) opinion by Judge Posner. Because so much of the decision is dicta (material that is unnecessary to the holding), and...
I Has a Flava: Does Framing Video Infringe Copyright? Hard to Say
Richard Posner LOLs a Bad Preliminary Injunction. But Does Anyone Get the Joke? Is Richard Posner’s opinion in Flava Works v. Gunter (better known as the “myVidster” case) already a month old? For such an anticipated decision, it sure flew under the radar after a...
"Overlapping Intellectual Property Rights" now available. Tara Aaron is now a published author.
Not long after we opened the firm, Tara got an invitation to co-author a book entitled "Overlapping Intellectual Property Rights," to be published by Oxford University Press. Two dozen intellectual property practitioners and professors from around the world...
Apple v. Samsung: Some Perspective on One Beeill-yun Dollars!
Dr. Evil Returns! Almost immediately after the jury in the Apple v. Samsung patent/trade-dress case returned its verdict, the twitterverse was buzzing with Dr. Evil jokes. Try as you might, but you couldn't say, "$1 billion" without either cracking up, or doing Dr....
Copyright Protection of APIs after Oracle v. Google: Poppin a Whelan
Part VI: Everything That's Old Is New Again (but it's Still Overruled) Last time, we examined Oracle’s strategy to overcome certain doom under the abstract-filter-compare test: pull back and look at the big picture. In other words, don’t focus on the line-by-line...
Copyright Protection for APIs after Oracle v. Google: The Trees Mattered More than the Forest
Part V: Oracle Wanted the Court to See the Forest for the Trees Last time, I explained the painstaking “abstraction-filtration-comparison” test (or “AFC test”) that most courts use to determine the extent of copyright protection for computer code. The test is tedious...
Oracle v. Google: The Challenge of Proving Copyright Infringement in Software: Abstract, Filter, Compare, Repeat
Part IV: Why Oracle Needed a New Legal Theory Worse Than Huey Lewis Needed a New Drug Last time, we looked at why half of each Java API "method" wasn’t copyrightable (because there was only one reasonable way to express the functionality) and that the other half of...
Oracle v. Google: Copyright, Coding Choices and the Merger Doctrine
Part III: What Happens to Copyright Protection When There's Only One Reasonable Way to Code Something Through philosophical discussions of motorcycle maintenance, pancakes and old 1980’s TV ads involving peanut butter and chocolate, my last two posts can be boiled...
Copyright and APIs after Oracle v. Google: Functional Expression or Expressive Function?
Part II: When Expression and Function Collide We're talking about computer code in Oracle v. Google, and computer code is challenging because it's expressive but also functional. Last time, I explained that when functionality gets mixed up with expression, we try to...
Copyright and APIs: After Oracle v. Google, Are Developers Safe?
Part I: APIs and IP The big Oracle v. Google order holding that the Java API is not copyrightable is now about two months old, but software developers are still talking about it because APIs (“application programming interfaces”) are so crucial to what developers do....
Come on Get Happy! Publicity Rights in the Online Context
But it's Sad, Sad News for Momma Partridge Even when I was a little kid, I didn’t like the Partridge Family. It came on late in the afternoon (in syndication, of course), after some Looney Tunes-type cartoons. It always seemed to start promisingly, with a little...
