When legendary grifter Elizabeth Holmes was 19 years old, she conceived of a medical device that could perform extensive diagnostics in an eyeblink from only a single drop of blood; she had no idea how such a device would work or whether it was even possible, but that didn't stop her from drawing up a patent application for her "invention" and repeatedly submitting to the patent office until, eventually, she was awarded a patent for what amounted to a piece of uninspiring design fiction.
Gus writes, "Remember carbon paper? You're probably of a certain age if you can recall typing on a sandwich of two sheets of paper with a thin, grimy, black sheet between them to make copies."
Internet law troublemaker James Grimmelmann (previously) has released the fifth edition of his $30 DRM-free casebook ($65 for print) of Internet law, "a fast-moving casebook for a fast-moving subject."
The USPTO awarded Patent 8,609,158 last December for a mix of "evening primrose oil, rice, sesame seeds, green beans, coffee, meat, cheese, milk, green tea extract, evening primrose seeds, and wine" that "rebukes cancer, cancer cells, and kills cancer" — the accompanying extract states, "it works." — Read the rest
Researchers from Facebook, Cornell and UCSF published a paper describing a mass-scale experiment in which Facebook users' pages were manipulated to see if this could induce and spread certain emotional states.
U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan accepted Google's argument that its scanning of more than 20 million books, and making "snippets" of text available online, constituted "fair use" under U.S.
Mary Robinette Kowal sez, "The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has partnered with the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Writers Union to create a free workshop on the Google Book Settlement."
Hear the best-informed, best-known authorities on what the second version of the Google Book Search Settlement would mean for writers if it is approved by the court.
Copyright scholar and activist James Grimmelman sez, "For people curious about Oregon's "our laws are copyrighted, so hands off!" move, I've written an essay providing some context. Oregon isn't the first to try to copyright the law. In fact, the first Supreme Court case on copyright was about a collection of court opinions. — Read the rest
Copyfighter James Grimmelman — now at the New York Law School — has just posted a new draft paper: "Information Policy for the Library of Babel." It's a lovely allegory about the Library of Babel proposed in 1941 by Jorge Luis Borges, in which all possible books are available — and about the information policy the library's guardians would have to implement to make it the best library possible. — Read the rest
David sez, "Yale Law School is hosting an amazing conference this weekend on the "Global Flow of Information" that will vascillate wildly between insanely theoretical and the benignly abstract. James Grimmelmann of LawMeme is leading the liveblogging of this extravaganza, which includes talks by Yochai Benkler, Siva Vaidhyanathan and Jamie Love. — Read the rest
James Grimmelmann has penned a bloody brilliant essay about the issues raised by allowing (or not allowing) players to hold an intellectual property right to objects they create in games. Inspired by the Second Life announcement at last month's State of Play conference, Grimmelmann presents and synthesizes the positions of a variety of the world's leading thinkers on IP, game economics, and playability, and comes up with more questions than answers. — Read the rest
Ernest Miller James Grimmelmann at Lawmeme has written up a two-part tutorial to help geeks understand the US legal system, using Lawrence Lessig's brief in the upcoming Eldred hearing. This is great stuff.
Cover Page: #!usr/bin/legal
Not unlike a fax cover sheet, the first page of a legal document typically contains only metadata, and the Eldred brief is no exception.
