Almost a Great Article
UPDATE: All three briefs are provided here.
The New York Times ran a good, but not great, article on patent litigation today. Apparently, the first biochemical permanent injunction hearing post-eBay is coming up, and in Oakland to boot before Judge Wilken (Boalt '75). I say good, but not great, because the article does a fantastic job of providing the personal and business sides of the story, but it leaves out any sophisticated discussion of the legal issue. As the Intro to IP class is (hopefully) now aware, the availability of injunctions drive much patent litigation. The Supreme Court recently stepped in to correct the Federal Circuit
and restore the equity roots to the injunction decision in the eBay v. Mercexchange case.
So far, the general rule has been: if you compete, you're enjoined. If not, you get damages. But here we have our first post-eBay case with competition and a public interest angle. What does equity require here? According to the court's calendar, the hearing was continued, but it does not say until when. For whatever reason, I'm having trouble accessing NDCal's PACER database right now, but I'll try to get the briefs and a hearing date for you, loyal readers. In the meantime, the case number is C-04-5429.
Ha, now we'll see whether people prefer class certification to patent remedies or not. At least the top post is no longer debating semantics re: MILF & cougar.
The New York Times ran a good, but not great, article on patent litigation today. Apparently, the first biochemical permanent injunction hearing post-eBay is coming up, and in Oakland to boot before Judge Wilken (Boalt '75). I say good, but not great, because the article does a fantastic job of providing the personal and business sides of the story, but it leaves out any sophisticated discussion of the legal issue. As the Intro to IP class is (hopefully) now aware, the availability of injunctions drive much patent litigation. The Supreme Court recently stepped in to correct the Federal Circuit
and restore the equity roots to the injunction decision in the eBay v. Mercexchange case.
So far, the general rule has been: if you compete, you're enjoined. If not, you get damages. But here we have our first post-eBay case with competition and a public interest angle. What does equity require here? According to the court's calendar, the hearing was continued, but it does not say until when. For whatever reason, I'm having trouble accessing NDCal's PACER database right now, but I'll try to get the briefs and a hearing date for you, loyal readers. In the meantime, the case number is C-04-5429.
Ha, now we'll see whether people prefer class certification to patent remedies or not. At least the top post is no longer debating semantics re: MILF & cougar.
posted by Tom Fletcher at 5:00 PM
7 Comments:
From the front page of the Northern District's web site:
ATTENTION: ECF will be offline Friday 02/16/07 5 p.m. to Monday 02/19/07 7 p.m.
Also, note that the Court will be closed on Monday February 19, 2007 in observance of Presidents' Day.
(It's apparently maintenance.)
I guess they finished early.
what happened at the end of BLF this year?
8:27,
Arguably, it is easier to link your question to Kevin Bacon than to this thread.
Answer: Think Dresden fire bombing except invovling cars owned by law enforcement, and the bombs being replaced by a '02 Chateau De Two'BuckChuck.
I'm curious to hear people's reactions to this article: http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/opinion/20althouse.html?ex=1172120400&en=66396da8349315de&ei=5121&emc=eta1
This seems to confirm nothing so much as professors' own sense of self-importance. They are in the somewhat astounding position of not being judged at all on the quality of their teaching, yet somehow believing they have a deep effect on students.
If you ask me--or most Boalties, I suspect--what the professor does in class doesn't matter much at all. I'm not saying there's not good teachers and bad teacher. But whether they care about "making us lawyers" or "allowing us to express ourselves," whether they cold-call or ask for volunteers, whether they are scrupulously apolitical in class like Yoo or entirely political like HaLo--it's not really a big deal except to Fall first-years.
Most students I know derive their enjoyment (or lack thereof) in law school from roughly 1) how hard they are forced to work 2) how much self-afflicted pressure they think they are under 3) their social group 4) their involvement in student groups or journals and 5) their intellectual engagement with the material in class or out of class.
Whether a prof teaches with a smiley face or a frowny face is the least of our concerns.
Some students asked me what I thought about Lynne Stewart, given that she's speaking at Boalt on Friday. I mentioned that the key transcripts of Stewart's behavior were on the web and the students asked me for a link.
Here's my view. In short, even if John Ashcroft was a very bad man, even if the DOJ policies were awful, and even if the prosecutor's request that Stewart spend 30 years in jail showed an appalling lack of judgment, it's still the case that Stewart was a lawyer who knowingly cheated. I have two posts at my blog, here:
http://legalethicsforum.typepad.com/blog/2005/02/thinking_about_.html
http://legalethicsforum.typepad.com/blog/2005/02/key_parts_of_st.html
The second post is a key to the transcripts that were the crux of the case against her. Page 29 of this transcript
http://lynnestewart.org/5192.pdf
shows undeniably that she knew she had engineered a ruse to break the law. If you're going to see Stewart speak, you should read that passage. Ask yourself, if a lawyer for a white collar criminal, an organized crime kingpin, or drug dealer had done what Stewart did, would we approve? If a lawyer for one of those clients pretended to be having an attorney client meeting so that the convicted felon could get out a forbidden message, would we approve that lawyer's conduct?
As you'll see from my first post, I am big fan of lawyers who have stepped up to fight the good fight for the rule of law in the context of the GWOT. (I hope many of you attended the Boalt presentation by JAG lawyers Lt Kuebler and Maj Fleener, with whom I worked.) But I'm no fan of lawyers who cheat.
Post a Comment
<< Home