- California’s Prop 65 and the numbness of overwarning [Tung Yin via Bainbridge]
- Time to kill off medical-method patents [Alex Tabarrok, Medical Progress Today]
- Spite decoration: “Gretna fence squabble continues in bitter fashion” [NOLA.com, Louisiana]
- “The Problem With Immigration Lawyers and How to Fix It” [Dzubow/Asylumist via Legal Ethics Forum]
- “Are NYC transit bus drivers prevented from calling police?” [Turkewitz]
- “Circumvention tourism” is travel intended to sidestep medical regulation [Glenn Cohen, Prawfs]
- Abolition of wasteful, arrogant California redevelopment agencies has Tim Cavanaugh ready to kiss a nurse in Times Square [Reason, similarly Gideon Kanner and Steven Greenhut]
Tagged as:
California,
eminent domain,
immigration law,
NYC,
patent quality,
Prop 65
- Even before federal raid on Gibson, Lacey Act scared owners of vintage instruments: “I don’t go out of the country with a wooden guitar.” [Eric Felten/WSJ, AW, PoL, Trevor Burrus/Cato]
- Dear NYT contributor Bakan: getting your kids’ attention may not require overthrowing world corporate economy [Nancy French, NR "Home Front"] More: Sullum.
- “West Memphis Three” freed [Damon Root, Greenfield]
- Forest Labs case: after outcry, feds drop effort to force firing of drug company CEO not charged with wrongdoing [WSJ, WLF] Background: Charles Hooper & David Henderson, Hoover (“The FDA’s War on Drugs”), The Economist (“The government seeks to sack an innocent boss”, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Steve McConnell/Drug and Device Law, Josh Wright/Truth on the Market]
- Google paid dearly in smartphone deal for our dysfunctional patent system [Gordon Crovitz] “Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents” [Timothy Lee, Forbes]
- Lawyer’s suit: Kasowitz firm ignored his “superior legal mind” [Lowering the Bar, Above the Law]
- “In Chicago, You Need a License To Help Others Get a License” [Mark Perry]
Tagged as:
cellphones,
Chicago,
child protection,
environment,
Google,
music and musicians,
patent quality,
pharmaceuticals
- “Woman Sues Adidas After Fall She Blames on Sticky Shoes” [Lowering the Bar]
- Texas lawmakers file loser pays proposals [SE Tex Record] Actual scope of proposals hard to discern through funhouse lens of NYT reporting [PoL] Marie Gryphon testimony on loser-pays proposals in Arkansas [Manhattan Institute, related]
- Google awarded patent on changing of logo for special days [Engadget via Coyote]
- “Civil Gideon in Deadbeat Dad Cases Would Be ‘Massive’ Change, Lawyer Tells Justices” [Weiss, ABA Journal, Legal Ethics Forum]
- Amateur-hour crash-fakers in Bronx didn’t reckon on store surveillance camera [NY Post]
- “Plaintiffs’ Lawyers in Cobell Defend $223M Fee Request” [BLT]
- Show of harm not needed: FDA kicks another 500 or so legacy drugs off market, this time in the cold-and-cough area [WaPo]
- “Wal-Mart v. Dukes: Rough Justice Without Due Process” [Andrew Trask, WLF]
Tagged as:
Arkansas,
civil gideon,
crash faking,
FDA,
Google,
loser pays,
patent quality,
product liability,
slip and fall,
Texas,
Wal-Mart v. Dukes
- What, no more monkeys or snakes? Starting March 15 new federal regulation will restrict definition of “service animals” to dogs alone [Central Kitsap Reporter, earlier, more]
- “Appeals court: SD prosecutor’s conduct denied man a fair trial” [San Diego Union-Tribune]
- A tale of local regulation: “A septic system at the crossroads” [Roland Toy, American Thinker]
- Firm sues Fark, Reddit, Yahoo, etc. etc. over 2002 patent on “structured news release generation and distribution,” draws rude reply from defendant TechCrunch;
- UK schools minister: “no touching pupils” policy keeps music teachers from doing their job [Telegraph]
- Legal ethicist Stephen Gillers hired at $950/hour to approve ethics of Ken Feinberg’s BP compensation fund work [two views: Andrew Perlman and Monroe Freedman; earlier, Byron Stier]. Per Ted at PoL, trial lawyers criticizing the arrangement “complain that BP is using the same tactic plaintiffs’ lawyers regularly use to prove their own ethics.”
- Is WordPress’s quirky “Hello Dolly” plugin a copyright infringement? [TechDirt]
- Congrats, you’re eligible for a job with the D.C. public school system [ten years ago on Overlawyered; more on criminal records and hiring, subject of a current EEOC crusade]
Tagged as:
copyright,
ethics,
patent quality,
prosecution,
San Diego,
schools,
service animals,
United Kingdom,
WordPress
Honestly, it was only a finger twitch, I wasn’t meaning to infringe: “Hopewell Culture & Design reckons it owns the act of double-clicking, and is suing Apple, Nokia, Samsung and just about everyone else for breaching its patent.” [The Register]
Tagged as:
cellphones,
patent quality
“Indian activists claim that the patent [awarded to Colgate for a tooth powder] is bogus because the ingredients — including clove oil, camphor, black pepper and spearmint — have been used for the same purpose for hundreds, ‘if not thousands,’ of years on the subcontinent.” [Fox Orlando]
Tagged as:
India,
patent quality
“When I look closely at these claims, I am appalled to discover this patent claims, as a novel invention, things that I’ve done regularly, with a mix of my brain and a computer, since at least 1999.” [Bradley M. Kuhn via Pete Warden]
Tagged as:
patent quality
- “CBO Stands By Its Report: Tort Reform Would Save Billions” [ShopFloor; our weekend post on what actually wound up in Reid bill]
- “Indianapolis Tacks on Steep Fines for Challenging Traffic Tickets” [Balko]
- “Fugitive Located Inside Homeland Security Dept. Office” [Lowering the Bar]
- Assumption of risk? New York courts field legal complaints over mosh dance injuries [Hochfelder]
- Company claiming patent on Ajax web technique is suing lots of defendants [W3C, ImVivo via @petewarden]
- Why Arizona voters still back Sheriff Joe [Conor Friedersdorf/Daily Dish, von Spakovsky/NRO (deploring "persecution" of Arpaio), Greenfield]
- “Are Breast Implants and Donated Organs Marital Assets?” [Carton, Legal Blog Watch]
- “Disbarment Looms for First Attorney Convicted Under N.J. Anti-Runner Law” [NJLJ]
Tagged as:
assumption of risk,
chasing clients,
Indiana,
medical malpractice,
patent quality,
Phoenix,
tort reform,
traffic laws
- UK libel law still casting a chill on free speech around the world [Floyd Abrams, Index on Censorship via Ken at Popehat, Kirk Hartley]
- Much talked about Ramesh Ponnuru op-ed on Constitution and government consideration of race [NYT]
- “EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent” [Electronic Frontier Foundation]
- Why you can’t get low-cost health insurance, part LXVII: legal pressure on insurers to cover behavioral autism treatment [NLJ, Detroit Free Press]
- New Jersey disbars reparations lawyer Ed Fagan, New York having already done so [Black Star News, JTA, Newark Star-Ledger, NJLJ]
- Author Wendell Berry: force NAIS animal-tagging on every small farmer, and you’ll have to call the cops on me [Food Renegade; more on NAIS and small producers, Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund; earlier here, etc.]
- Indiana enacts what Gov. Mitch Daniels calls nation’s strongest law protecting teachers from lawsuits [WANE, WTHR]
- Town of Kenner, La. says it’s learned its lesson from being sued and will ticket drunken bicyclists even if they’re badly hurt in accidents [nine years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
autism,
free speech,
Indiana,
insurance,
patent quality,
school discipline,
United Kingdom
- In case you were waiting for it: update on “toxic-bra” litigation [OnPoint News, Kashmir Hill, Above the Law (noting that rashes can have many different causes); earlier]
- Parts 5 & 6 of White Coat’s malpractice-suit saga [opposition's expert witness; emotional support]
- “Global Insurance Fraud by North Korea Outlined” [Washington Post]
- British cops aren’t saying which famous buildings you can be stopped/searched for photographing [BoingBoing]
- FBI said to probe whether construction-defect lawyers have improper ties to Nevada homeowner associations that give them business [Carter Wood at Point of Law]
- With junk science in even criminal prosecutions, is there hope of keeping it out of civil cases? [Coyote]
- “Remember when you could fight with a sibling and not face arrest?” [Obscure Store, 10-year-old Texas girl]
- Australian man obtains patent on “circular transportation facilitation device”, otherwise known as “the wheel”, to make point about ease of obtaining weak patents [eight years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
Australia,
insurance fraud,
junk science,
medical malpractice,
patent quality
In Patent Application No. WO/2006/068863 (h/t The Browser), McDonald’s claims:
A method of making a sandwich composed of at least a bread component and sandwich garnish comprising: placing sandwich garnish material on a sandwich assembly tool, the sandwich assembly tool comprising a region for holding sandwich garnish material to be applied to a bread component of a sandwich, the member comprising at least one cavity; placing the bread component over and adjacent the cavity; and thereafter inverting the sandwich assembly tool and the bread component while the bread is adjacent and covering the cavity to cause the sandwich garnish to be deposited from the cavity to the bread component.
Tagged as:
McDonald's,
patent law,
patent quality
Lawyer Scott Harris is appealing the Patent Office’s rejection of US Patent Application No. 09/387,823, in which he had hoped to obtain a patent on the concept of a “marketing company devoted to selling/marketing products produced by other companies in return for a share of their profits”. [Slashdot]
Tagged as:
patent quality
-
Griffin Bell, Carter AG dead at 90, was (among much else) respected Democratic voice for litigation reform [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
-
“700,000 squiggles”: historic NY high court crackdown on trial lawyers’ pothole map [NYT; D'Onofrio v. City of New York slip op h/t reader Andrew Barovick; way back, City Journal]
-
Judge gets off pretty easy after her drunken crash into cop car [Hartford Courant via ChicTrib] Connecticut’s wild-n-crazy judiciary [Courant]
-
Follow the rules and seat Burris: National Journal quotes me in its bloggers’ poll [Illinois Senate appointment]
-
Legal history moment: Statute of Anne, 1710, turned copyright law into force for liberty [Cathy Gellis]
-
Blind editorial squirrel finds acorn: NY Times editorial on Calif good-Samaritan liability not half bad [yes, NYT]
-
“Win yourself a $50,000 bounty by busting a patent” [Forbes]
-
Dental student dismissed from University of Michigan wins $1.7 million from four profs, argued that claimed academic deficiencies were just ruse [ABA Journal]
Tagged as:
colleges and universities,
Connecticut,
copyright,
Good Samaritan,
NYC,
patent quality
- Newest “Trial Lawyers Inc.” report is on Louisiana [Manhattan Institute, Point of Law]
- Mel Weiss disbarred automatically w/strong language from judges [Matter of Weiss h/t @erwiest]
- Pro se claimant: I wrote down cure for cancer and then the darn hospital stole it! [Above the Law]
- “California Supreme Court Ruling May Deter Good Samaritans” [The Recorder; SF Chronicle with copious reader comments, GruntDoc, our coverage last year]
- Due diligence on dodgy funds? Sometimes it seems everyone’s relying on someone else to do that [Bronte Capital] Madoff fraud may date to 1970s, maybe “recent laxity” angle has been overdone [Securities Docket] “Ponzi crawl” = pub crawl whereby new person is added at each location and has to buy a round [Re Risk]
- Radley Balko on Julie Amero malware-prosecution story [Reason, earlier]
- Join Paul Ehrlich in some of the world’s most famously refuted predictions, and you too may get to be Obama’s science adviser [John Tierney/NYT, John Holdren]
Wisconsin Minnesota pig-sitter trial set for March, claim is that defendant let star porker overfeed and gain a hundred pounds [LaCrosse Tribune h/t @kevinokeefe]- More on the Patent and Trademark Office “acceptable error” employment case [Venture Chronicles, Jeff Nolan; earlier]
- Procter & Gamble “Satanism” case finally settles, soap giant got $19 million verdict against four Amway distributors who spread rumor [OnPoint News]
- Once filing of a suit severs the channels of communication, attorneys and clients alike begin to make up “what really happened” narratives [Settle It Now]
- Sometimes lawyers need to be formal. Don’t IM “Court denied your appeal u will b executed saturday thx” [Beck & Herrmann]
- Bangladesh hoping to build replica of Taj Mahal despite copyright claims [Times Online h/t @mglickman]
- Midnight regulations? “OMB Watch” vigilant (and with reason) during this R-2-D transition but sang different tune in 2000′s D-2-R [Gillespie, Reason]
Tagged as:
California,
copyright,
Good Samaritan,
hospitals,
Louisiana,
Manhattan Institute,
Melvyn Weiss,
patent quality,
pro se,
Wisconsin
Annals of civil service protection: the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the Patent and Trademark Office, which dismissed Asokkumar Pal after it “reviewed 16 randomly selected cases from Pal’s file to determine whether he was properly reviewing examiner decisions. They found he was not making the correct decisions – that he erred more than 35% of the time. (A 25% error rate would have been acceptable).” Pal’s appeal contended that others in the office had even higher error rates, that he had received many “outstanding” performance reviews, and that managers should have been required to review all of his cases rather than just a random sampling, but to no avail. (Patently-O, Dec. 16)*.
*Yes, we’re linking Patently-O even though they’re (momentarily) still ahead of us in the ABA blog contest voting. We’ll even stipulate that they’re a pretty good blog. That doesn’t excuse you from going and voting for Overlawyered now.
Tagged as:
civil service,
patent quality
- Chemerinsky, other critics should apologize to Second Circuit chief judge Dennis Jacobs over bogus “he doesn’t believe in pro bono!” outcry [Point of Law and update]
- New York high court skeptical of ultra-high contingency fee in Alice Lawrence v. Graubard Miller case [NYLJ; earlier here and here]
- Panel of legal journalists: press let itself be used in attack on Judge Kozinski [Above the Law]
- Unfree campaign speech, cont’d: South Dakota anti-abortion group sues to suppress opponents’ ads as “patently false and misleading” [Feral Child]
- Even if you’re tired of reading about Roy Pearson’s pants, you might still enjoy Carter Wood’s headlines on the case at ShopFloor ["Pandora's Zipper", "Suit Alors!"]
- Rare grant of fees in patent dispute, company had inflicted $2.5 million in cost on competitors and retailers by asserting rights over nursing mother garb [NJLJ]
- Time to be afraid? Sen. Bingaman (D-N.M.) keen on reintroducing talk-radio-squelching Fairness Doctrine [Radio Equalizer]
- “Yours, in litigious anticipation” — Frank McCourt as child in Angela’s Ashes drafted a nastygram with true literary flourish [Miriam Cherry, Concurring Opinions]
Tagged as:
Alex Kozinski,
broadcasters,
campaign regulation,
contingent fee,
Erwin Chemerinsky,
Ireland,
nastygrams,
New York state,
patent quality,
pro bono,
Roy Pearson,
sanctions,
Second Circuit,
South Dakota
