President Bush said today:
This government does not torture people.
Blawgletter would risk a charge of snarkiness if we said something like:
The Second Circuit today barred a copyright co-owner from going back in time to kill another co-owner’s infringement claims. The case involved two songs — "L.O.V.E." and "Don’t Trade in My Love" — versions of which hip-hop soul singer Mary J. Blige recorded on a triple platinum album, No More Drama. Sharice Davis sued
The NYT reports today on the influx of doctors since Texas enacted a law that makes medical malpractice lawsuits uneconomic.
No word on the law’s effect on the frequency of malpractice. Dare we hope that only really terrific physicians respond to the virtual absence of malpractice liability?
Barry Barnett
The NYT reports today that government lawyers okayed the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods shortly after Alberto Gonzales took over as America’s chief defender of the rule of law.
Imagine Blawgletter’s surprise.
We admit to enjoying the part about an exchange between James B. Comey and David S. Addington over a "torture" memo by John Yoo.
A chandelier depends from the ceiling.
Do you know the difference between an "independent" patent claim and a "dependent" one? If you don’t but would like to, the Federal Circuit offered a primer on the subject today in Monsanto Co. v. Sygenta Seeds, Inc., No. 06-1472 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 4, 2007). The court concluded
One pill makes you larger.
Today the Second Circuit solved a possible conflict between different kinds of employee welfare benefit plans by carving out a sub-class.
Merck-Medco contracted to manage pharmaceutical benefits for the plans and their members. The plans alleged that Merck-Medco breached fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974
The Fifth Circuit yesterday sent a securities case back to the district court for trial. The decision reversed a summary judgment for Terrebonne Parish on its statute of limitations defense. The court held that disappointing financial results didn’t give the securities purchasers "inquiry notice" of possible fraud. They didn’t get notice, the court concluded, until
The Doobie Brothers sang "Blackwater".
In 1651, the bookish Englishman Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan. In it, he ruminated on humans’ cession of their natural rights to a sovereign state in return for protection. The social contract ended the war of all against all and saved us from a life that he described, in a
The First Circuit held yesterday that a "reconstruction" of a copyrightable work doesn’t satisfy the "copy" requirement for copyright registration. The author in the case wrote down lyrics and music for an original song on a piece of paper in 1993. He forgot about it until eight years later, when he learned that somebody else
By day, J. Gregory Sidak teaches at the Georgetown University Law Center and consults for Criterion Economics, which he founded.
Recently, Dr. Sidak submitted to the Federal Communications Commission the last of several declarations opposing approval of the plan by radio satellite provider Sirius to buy its sole competitor, XM. He summarizes his conclusions in