Blawgletter has noticed an inverse relationship between exercising and our girth.  The revelation has led us to explore ways for exploiting it, preferably without any discomfort or other unpleasantness.  And we think we;ve discovered a way.

The method, which we call the Starbucks diet, works best in suburban areas of your larger cities — your Dallases, your Houstons, your Philadelphias, Chicagos, Bostons, and San Franciscos.  First:  Go to a Starbucks coffee shop.  Order a coffee beverage that does NOT contain cream, caramel, sugar, or any other high-calorie or high-fat ingredient.  Second:  Walk as you sip your espresso, skim cappuccino, or plain coffee of the day to the next Starbucks or the one after that.  Do not enter any Starbucks if you have not finished drinking your first caffeine-rich liquid.  Order the same beverage.  Third:  Repeat the first and second steps as many times as you can, perhaps getting an Ethos water and a fruit and cheese plate for your mid-day meal.

The Starbucks diet will take off the flab in no time flat.  It’ll also enhance your alertness.

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14_2 Our feed sometimes gets the jitters.

Pirates
Software pirates?  Eh, probably not.

Two patents for preventing software piracy survived appeal to the Federal Circuit today.  The patentholder, z4 Technologies, sued Microsoft for infringement by its "Office" application software group and "Windows" operating system.   An East Texas jury found for z4 and awarded it $115 million.  After trial, U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis rejected the defendants’ motion for judgment as a matter of law.  He also enhanced damages by $25 million and awarded z4 its attorneys’ fees. 

Although the Federal Circuit agreed with Microsoft on a point or two, it held that the errors didn’t require reversal or a new trial.  The court construed "user" the way Microsoft did but concluded that the difference made no difference.  It also rejected Microsoft’s arguments about obviousness by anticipation and inclusion of foreign sales in the damages award.  z4 Technologies, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., No. 06-1638 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 16, 2007).

Blawgletter bets the lawyers had fun talking about whether Microsoft pirated the anti-pirating patents.

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14 Our feed likes pirate movies.

Blawgletter(R)

Trademark law fascinates Blawgletter — as do many other aspects of commercial law.  It took a personal turn though last month, when the Patent and Trademark Office added Blawgletter to its Principal Register of trademarks.

Our thanks to David McCombs and Jeff Becker (at Haynes and Boone) for prosecuting our application.  You guys rock!

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14_3 Our feed believes that rocking does not preclude rolling.

Barry

We at Blawgletter pride ourselves on having a sense of humor. 

We hope Barry Bonds has one too.

A San Francisco grand jury indicted Mr. Bonds today for perjury and obstruction of justice.  Something to do with steroids and muscle mass.

We wonder why prosecutors waited so long to ask a grand jury for an indictment of Mr. Bonds on charges arising out of his grand jury testimony in December 2003, nearly four years ago.

See articles here, here, here, here, and here.  Also here.

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14_2 This post has at least a peripheral relationship to business trial law.

Today, the Ninth Circuit struck down the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s fuel mileage requirements for "light trucks", a category that includes lots of sports utility vehicles.  The court held NHTSA’s rule "arbitrary, capricious and contrary to" the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 in a bunch of ways.   The agency’s CAFE ("corporate average fuel economy") rule set the minimum too low, not least because it didn’t close the "SUV loophole".  The court ordered the agency to try again — quickly — and to draft a full-bore enrivonmental impact statement.  Center for Biological Diversity v. Nat’l Highway Traffic Safety Admin., No. 06-71891   

Blawgletter expects that NHTSA will get right on it.

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14 They always do, don’t they?

State attorneys general should shut up.  At least they ought to quit filing lawsuits — per the WSJ today.  The AGs’ sin?  "Go[ing] Wild".

The Journal’s editorial page wants somebody to rein in the 50 AGs (43 of whom hold their office by virtue of popular election).  The editors desire imposing "uniform rules governing [the AGs’] conduct" on these tribunes of the people. 

The source of the rules and thus the guarantor of their wisdom?  Why, "an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce" — that guardian of corporate accountability, defender of consumer and worker rights, and champion of ordinary citizens.  Count Blawgletter skeptical.

Par for the course, you say?  Alright.  But in the next to last paragraph of their editorial the scribes state that paying lawyers on an hourly basis instead of on a contingency "would eliminate a gross conflict of interests."  That goes too far.

Since when does having a stake in the best result for a client constitute a conflict of interests, much less a gross one?  The WSJ may have good and persuasive reasons for diminishing the standing and wealth of trial lawyers, but we don’t see complaining about an honest contract that rewards extraordinary lawyer performance as a valid criticism.

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14_2 Our feed wishes the WSJ published every day.

Hautediggitydog
Sleeping puppy with Haute Diggity Dog chew toys.

The Fourth Circuit today held that luxury designer Louis Vuitton Malletier, of Paris, barked up the wrong tree by suing Haute Diggity Dog, of Las Vegas.  LVM howled in protest at HDD’s including a "Chewy Vuiton" handbag with its canine teething toy.  The three-judge pack agreed that the chewing device didn’t violate LVM’s intellectual property rights.  Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A. v. Haute Diggity Dog, LLC, No. 06-2267 (4th Cir. Nov. 13, 2007).

HDD’s website describes the company as "the brain puppy of Pamela Reeder".  Yo, dawg!

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14 Arf! means please subscribe!

Blawgletter mentioned a new antitrust investigation last week, this one involving cathode ray tubes.  What do CRTs do?  We don’t know the science part but we have learned that CRTs graced the earliest television sets and today go in computer monitors and televisions.  Their tubiness makes them bulkier than their flat-screen cousins (LCD, plasma, DLP), but they get better resolution and cost less.

So who makes CRTs?  The news of the investigation named Samsung and a joint venture between Matshusita and Toshiba.  See Bloomberg, EU, Japan Raid Cathode-Ray Tube Makers in Cartel Case. 

Out of pure curiosity, we’ve put together our own list of past and current CRT manufacturers:

Matsushita Toshiba Picture Display Co.
Samsung SDI Co.
NEC Display Solutions
SANYO Electric Co. Ltd.
Fujitsu Siemens Computers
SONY
Hitachi
Royal Philips
RCA
National
Dumont
Sylvania

People who buy a price-fixed product directly from a price-fixing company can collect treble damages plus attorneys’ fees.  Hmmm.

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14_3 Goodnight all.

A U.S. District Judge today ordered the White House to preserve any backup tapes containing emails, according to the LA Times.  The restraint comes in a case alleging that the White House failed to, er, preserve emails, violating federal law.  The administration said it’d save the backups without an order. 

His Honor must have thought:  Yeah — just like you did with the emails you can’t find anymore.

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14_2

Linda Greenhouse reports in The New York Times today that the Supreme Court may take a key gun rights case as early as Thursday.  The lawsuit challenged the District of Columbia’s strict handgun control law.  The D.C. Circuit struck down the law because, the 2-1 majority held, the second amendment confers an "individual" right to keep and bear arms, not a merely "collective" one. 

Blawgletter likes guns, likes owning them and shooting them.  But the D.C. Circuit majority’s citation of and quotation from Dred Scott struck us as at best numbskullish and possibly worse.  We hope the Court does take the case and, regardless of the outcome, issues at least a rap on the majority’s knuckles.  See Dred Scott Supports Right to Handgun, Court Holds.

Barry Barnett

Feedicon14x14 The federal courts took today off, so don’t blame us for not having any new case summaries!