Per Wired -

A federal judge on Monday freed the producers of a movie promoting intelligent design to continue using a 15-second recording of John Lennon's "Imagine."

A New York judge said the makers of Expelled had a right of fair use under copyright law to use a small portion of the work without Yoko Ono's permission.

I'm not going to get into the controversy surrounding the subject of this film. But in terms of the fair use/copyright issue, this is great news indeed.

The Supreme Court has refused to consider the case of whether or not fantasy sports leagues infringe on publicity rights of a sports league and/or the players.

Since an appeals court has already ruled that the First Amednment trumps so-called 'publicity rights' in this context, this news is no cause for alarm. However, it still would have been nice for the Supreme Court to take the case to put an exclamation point on that obvious conclusion.

This will be an important case - one that the Supreme Court may take a close look at, depending on how things shake out with the final decision.

Volokh and Patently-O have the details and related thoughts.

Even if it doesn't, this article offers further proof of just how thoroughly corrupt our current patent system is.

Following up on Stephen Spear's post on the District judge's ruling against the attempts by the U.S. Patent Office to reign in firms trying to apply for large numbers of patents at once -

The full court decision can be found here [PDF file]. [h/t: CourtHouseNews.com]

While the ruling contains a lot of legalese, the judge also manages to describe in great detail (and relatively simple language) the process involved in patent applications - and why the current system allows firms with large financial and legal resources to get away with murder in the patent realm by being able to outlast the patent office and wear it down. Definitely worth a read.

The end results of the ruling are indeed tragic. However, I have to admit that the judge may have a point when he says that the proposed changes need to come form Congress itself - not from the whims of unelected and unaccountable administrative officials (even though these particular whims are very much welcome). If you give too much lawmaking power to administrators, the day will come when the pendulum swings the other way after pro-monopolist workers come to dominate the Patent Office. But since Congress is frequently bought off by the patent lobby, that leaves the future landscape rather bleak. Hopefully the Supreme Court will continue its attempts at patent reform by enlarging the very incremental steps they have undertook thus far.

Interesting book forthcoming - Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk by James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer.

First chapter can be read here.

I'm still not convinced by their obvious desire to link the concept of patents with real property, but the authors seem honest and upfront about examining the problems with the argument. Plus, some of their proposed reforms of the patent seem spot on - especially the notion of doing away with the judicial monopoly of the D.C.-based Federal Circuit that allows it (and only it) to interpret U.S. patent laws. This is a huge mistake that doesn't often get a lot of attention.

The L.A. Times turns a spotlight on the Church of Scientology's abuse of IP claims in order to try and silence its critics.

No corner of the Web, it appears, is safe for Scientology. Blogger and lawyer Scott Pilutik recently posted a story noting that Scientology was yanking down EBay auctions for used e-meters, the device the church uses for spiritual counseling. EBay allows brand owners -- Louis Vuitton or Rolex, say -- to remove items they believe infringe on their trademark or patent rights. Basically, fakes. But, Pilutik said, the used e-meters being taken down were genuine. Reselling them was no different than putting a for-sale sign on your old Chevy.

"What's actually going on here," he wrote, is that the church is "knowingly alleging intellectual property violations that clearly don't exist."

...

The current wave of anti-Scientology activity began in January, when a video of Tom Cruise extolling the religion's tech-based approach to enlightenment was leaked onto YouTube, where users holding it up to ridicule copied and recopied it; several sites posted it without hesitation.

It wasn't long before Nick Denton, who as publisher of the blog syndicate Gawker Media had put the video online first, received a legal threat from a law firm representing Scientology, alleging copyright infringement. But Denton refused to take the video down.

"It was an awesome news story," Denton wrote in an e-mail. "If we didn't race to post it up, some other site would have. That, rather than litigation by Scientology, was the fear going through my mind."

The church's whack-a-mole campaign with the Cruise video became a rallying cry for Anonymous, which saw efforts to remove the videos from YouTube as an unwanted incursion into the domain of digital culture, where information and media, copyrighted or no, are often exchanged freely.

...

Ironically, it is the church's aversion to negative publicity -- and the legal strategy it has long used to prevent it, that has aroused more online ire than any other issue.

The website ChillingEffects .com has posted dozens of cease-and-desist letters sent by Scientology's lawyers to various website and Internet service providers requesting that copyrighted material be removed.

But in the diffuse and often Byzantine world of the Web, some precision legal strikes are more likely to backfire than hit their target. Scientology's use of copyright law appears to be an increasingly losing battle on the Web, said Andrew Bridges, a San Francisco-based intellectual property attorney. "The big question is: Is the copyright serving the purpose of promoting science and the useful arts, or is the purpose essentially the stifling of criticism?"

Read the whole article.

The Federal Court of Appeal in charge of interpreting Patent Law has been an absolute disgrace. I would have thought that it should be obvious that only tangible technology could be eligible for a patent under the law. But the court has at times implied that even modes of thought and communication can somehow be patented if it leads to concrete results in the physical world. Maybe they are slowly staring to get the message of just how wrong they have been all along.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit redefined the margins of patent eligibility in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group Inc. in 1998. The effect was to boost patent protection for business methods, such as financial models, contract provisions, insurance policy features, computer-related inventions and Internet startups.

There were unintended effects, too. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was deluged with new patent applications and had few examiners with the expertise to handle them. Four Supreme Court justices have bemoaned the precedent, calling it vague and contrary. And several financial-services companies, frequent targets of the business-method-patent holder, have run up millions and in some cases billions of dollars in royalties and damages.

After a decade of disagreement over the precedent's bearing on American innovation, the Federal Circuit decided Feb. 15 to revisit State Street through the lens of another case, In re Bilski, which lifts State Street's holding on business methods and attempts to carry it further.

In a rare move, the court scheduled an en banc hearing without prompting by the parties in the case. The hearing is set for May 8.

Read the whole thing here.

Tom Bell has a great work-in-progess book on Intellectual Property (which he convincingly argues should be renamed Intellectual 'Privilege' and not be confused with 'property').

Read it here.

Hat tip: Larry Lessig.

This is rich. You remember John Dillinger? The famous Depression-era bank robber? More than 70-years after police shot him down in Chicago, his great-nephew is claiming that he is owed royalties for the use of Dillinger's name and likeness. All thanks to a misuse of an already ridiculous Indiana 'publicity' law.

[Jeffrey Scalf] says he has been ripped off by the author and publisher of a Dillinger biography, who refused to pay him licensing fees. He feels burned by restaurateurs who use the 1930s bank robber's name to hawk burgers and beer, and cheated by a California video-game company that used Dillinger's digital likeness in a game about gangsters.

And don't even get Scalf started on civic leaders and festival organizers who stage public events using the notorious thief's name and exploits -- but won't pay him to use the name. It's highway robbery, he says.

By day, Scalf is a marketing executive for the Indiana Pacers basketball team. At night, he is at his computer, searching the Internet for information about Dillinger -- and hunting down those who would either profit from or smear his memory.

... Since 2001, Scalf has filed lawsuits or threatened legal action against those who blame his great-uncle for the police officer's killing, including cafe owners, museum organizers, historical societies and rural township officials. He has demanded that anyone using the name sign a waiver promising not to portray the bandit as vicious or mean-spirited.

"John did some bad things. He lived a tragic life," says Scalf. "But he was no killer."

That claim has drawn ridicule from most historians, and those targeted by Scalf say he is the one exploiting Dillinger -- for his own profit and personal glory.

"This isn't about preserving history," says author Dary Matera, whose publisher tangled with Scalf over "John Dillinger: The Life and Death of America's First Celebrity Criminal." "It's about control and money."

...

An Indiana law, known as a postmortem right of publicity, allows Scalf and other descendants the right to charge for, or prevent the use of, Dillinger's name, likeness, voice or personality, says Amy Wright, Scalf's attorney. In Indiana, such rights last 100 years after a person's death and cover, among other things, the deceased's signature, photograph, distinctive appearance and mannerisms.

After Dillinger's death, Scalf's grandmother held a majority portion of the rights, according to Wright, until she handed them over to her grandson in 1997. (She died in 2001.)

...

[Scalf] sued a computer game company in San Francisco. (They settled.) He fought with a Dillinger-themed restaurant in Hudson, Ind. (Its owner also settled.) He challenged a group of community boosters hosting a Dillinger Days festival in downtown Mason City, Iowa. (The town renamed the festival.)

...

That Scalf has turned to the law as a weapon to defend the legacy of a notorious criminal doesn't seem strange to him.

"John would have appreciated the irony," Scalf says. "Just because he broke the law doesn't mean other people can."

...

"There's a market in this," [Scalf] says.

There is indeed a market in this. Which proves just how sickening the 'right of publicity' legal scam truly is.

Read the whole story here, if you can dare stomach it.

Compare this case to what the 8th Circuit has recently ruled regarding the 'right of publicity'. (And yes - I continue to insist on always putting the phrase 'right of publicity' in quotes since it remains an illegitimate legal concept in my eyes. Hopefully the Dillinger case illustrates why I feel as such.)

Oh, and by the way, another federal court has already ruled that the Indiana 'publicity' law only applies to personalities who died after the law was first enacted in 1994. John Dilinger missed the boat by 60 years in this case.