Technology, Law, Baseball, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Etc.
LawLawLaw
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The opinions expressed in LawLawLaw do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Clock Tower Law Group, its employees, or the author. Exact change saves time.
Save The Whales
OK, that’s a lofty goal. And this newsletter won’t help achieve it. But you can reach a more modest goal. The goal of sharing this newsletter with one other person. Won’t you help? One reader becomes two, two becomes four, and pretty soon we’ve saved the whales. Or something like that.
Clock Tower Law Group’s clients range in size from a sole proprietor to a publicly traded company. Here’s what some of them are up to.
Access Portable IP Codec Wins Cool Stuff Award At NAB 2007 (2007-04-18)
ACCESS Portable, manufactured by Comrex Corporation, won radio’s most prestigious technology honor, the Radio World “Cool Stuff” Award, given by a panel of engineering judges on behalf of Radio World newspaper at the NAB2007 convention in Las Vegas.
Virtual High School Recognized As Best Practice By The United States Distance Learning Association (2007-05-08)
Virtual High School Global Consortium, the pioneer of online learning for high school students and online course design for teachers, received the United States Distance Learning Association’s (USDLA) 21st Century Best Practice Award in Distance Learning.
So, U Wanna Judge Songs & Videos (2007-05-22)
OurStage is kind of like American Idol on the web. Except better. There are no celebrity judges. The fans decide who wins. Here’s the scoop on how it works.
Kaon Wins Mitx Technology Award For Best ‘Interactive/Online Business’ Technology (2007-06-07)
Kaon Interactive, Inc., a provider of interactive sales and marketing solutions that help companies bring their products to life, was named winner of the ‘Interactive/Online Business’ category of the 4th Annual MITX Technology Awards.
ShopNBC Selects SiteSpect For Online Conversion Optimization (2007-06-27)
SiteSpect, Inc., the leader in non-intrusive Web site conversion optimization technology, announced that ShopNBC has deployed SiteSpect for conducting online multivariate testing to improve its Web site user experience. SiteSpect’s unique patent-pending technology is allowing ShopNBC to create tests and optimize conversions without page tagging, JavaScript, or site content changes.
Yahoo! Announces Completion Of Right Media Acquisition (2007-07-13)
Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company and Right Media Inc., creator of the Right Media Exchange, announced that Yahoo!’s acquisition of Right Media has been completed.
I don’t care what anybody else says. The summertime is a slow time for intellectual property law news. So I’m trying a new feature: funny trademarks. I research lots of trademarks and sometimes find some that make me chuckle. Other things that make me chuckle? The government trying to lock up the IP rights for models (i.e. toys) of military equipment. And the revised GPL v3 released on the same day as the iPhone. To be honest, I’ve given up on Linux on the desktop. Apple’s OS X gives me everything that I want (GUI with FreeBSD underneath). I think Linus Torvalds may have given up on GPL v3 as well (but not on Linux, of course).
Funny Trademark: Hammocks.com Accomplish Nothing…
Isn’t that exactly what you want to do in a hammock? I love it.
Supreme Court Reaches Landmark ‘It Depends’ Ruling (2007-05-28)
“We’re just nine justices – we don’t have answers to all the country’s legal problems,” said Breyer, frustrated with the pressure to reach a verdict.
Reconstruct A Feed’s History Using Google Reader (2007-06-28)
Google Reader can come in handy if you are trying to prove, for example, that images have been stolen or hotlinked from your website.
How To Defend Your Brands On The Internet (2007-07-01)
In 1997, if you had a domain name and a registered trademark for your brand, you were in good shape. In 2007, it takes more to protect your brand on the Internet, because the definition of “brand” has expanded to include things that aren’t necessarily trademarkable (such as the names of your key personnel) and because your brand it at risk from being used (and abused) by cybersquatters and others in ways that weren’t foreseeable a decade ago.
Revised Patriot Act Will Make It Illegal To Read Patriot Act (2007-07-04)
No ‘Gmail’ For Google In Germany (2007-07-06)
In what is being portrayed as a story of David vs. Goliath, a young German businessman has won his trademark fight against search giant Google, prohibiting it from using the name “Gmail” in Germany. This is why it’s important to get your trademark ducks in a row before launching a new product or service.
Making CAPTCHAs Productive (2007-05-25)
CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) help weed out spammers and scammers. CAPTCHA creator Louis von Ahn’s latest work is about making CAPTCHAs useful. What he’s done is made it so the text that users have to type are scans from books or other printed materials that are being scanned by Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive project. That way, each time people are simply trying to enter a comment on a website, they’re also helping to turn a scanned word into text for the Internet Archive
Kodak Branding Compared To Domain Names (2007-05-25)
Kodak can [stink] as much as they want. They have a brand which is estimated to be the seventh most famous brand in the world and worth $4.4 Billion. To take advantage of their brand, all they need to do it slap their “Kodak” name on a generic digital camera and it is instantly able to sell for a lot more. A Brand’s mental traffic is the same as a generic domain’s physical traffic. Generic domains will be able to slap their name on APIs and white labeled products and it will create instant profit for the domain owner and the other company.
How To Translate A Foreign Language RSS Feed (2007-06-19)
The Webware weblog details how to translate foreign language RSS feeds using Yahoo Pipes and Babel Fish.
Microsoft Office Users Can Now Import And Export To Open Document Format (ODF) (2007-07-07)
The Sun ODF Plug in for Microsoft Office gives users of Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint the ability to read, edit, and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format. The ODF Plug in is available as a free download from the Sun Download Center (SDLC).
Okajima: More Than Just Dice’s Buddy (2007-05-20)
Schilling Throws One-Hitter vs. A’s (2007-06-08)
TATB’s Third Annual Red Sox Midseason Report Card (2007-07-05)
Fifty wins, 31 losses, and a relatively comfortable double-digit lead in the American League East. Nope, not a bad half at all for your Boston Red Sox. So with a hat tip to Terry Francona for handling his ball club and all the ancillary stuff as deftly as any Sox manager we’ve ever seen – yep, Tito gets a hard-earned A – let’s break it all down, player by player, grade by grade, while hoping the good times continue to roll right through October.
Two big and contrasting music stories dominated the news over the last two months. The first was Apple’s May 30 launch of DRM-free music on iTunes and its June 29 launch of the iPhone, which is like an iPod on steroids. With a web browser. And a phone. Many people complained that Apple’s DRM-free music includes personally identifying data (kind of like any word processing document you create), but this really just balances consumer rights with accountability.
Meanwhile, the Copyright Office, egged on by the music recording industry, tried to kill Internet radio by raising royalty rates. Small stations got a temporary reprieve, many stations banded together in protest for a day of silence, an appeals court refused to stay the new royalty rates while SoundExchange says it will hold off on enforcing the new rates. For now. Stay tuned (assuming there are any more Internet radio stations remaining to tune in to).
Jordin Sparks Wins American Idol And How To Fix The Show (2007-05-24)
Many have criticized American Idol for not being as interesting this year as last. I agree, and here’s an open letter to the AI producers about how they can fix the show. Dear American Idol Producer Peeps: You’re still number one, but you’re falling, and it’s arguable that you’ve jumped the shark. But I can help. Trust me. Here’s what you have to do to fix the show and save the American Idol franchise.
Code Monkey Video (2007-06-25)
No monkeys were harmed in the making of this film.
Rolling Stone Writes Obituary For The Recording Industry’s Suicide (2007-06-29)
Rolling Stone wrote what is effectively an obituary for the industry’s suicide. In short, the recording industry was unable to recognize and leverage Internet technologies in time to change its business model.
Differentiating Marketing, PR, Advertising, And Branding (2007-05-29)
Ads of the World has visually defined marketing, public relations, advertising, and branding via cartoons. Handy if you’re unclear on which types of marketing are which.
Mars Rover Beginning To Hate Mars (2006-10-24)
After nearly three years of nonstop data collection, Spirit has begun transmitting obscene gestures and confusing rants.
MacGyver Tip: Unlock Your Vehicle With A Tennis Ball (2007-06-26)
Fin-Duck: Sauna Cruising Boat
Fin-Duck is a boat, a sauna, a duck, and a summer cottage powered by an outboard motor. Beats a Duck Tour, I think.
