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All confirmable documents to back up the claims will be made available to you accordingly. Meanwhile, I have worked out the strategies and technicalities whereby the funds can be claimed in any of our Clearing Houses without any hitches. Furthermore, 40% of the total funds will be for you as the foreign partner, 10% will go to charity organization, while 50% will be mine as the initiator of the deal. If you are interested, Please email me for discussion of this transaction in detail.
You can wait until the end of the term to hear oral argument in Bilski v. Kappos, or you can listen to Professor Doug Lichtman’s students’ impassioned reading of the transcript, on the superb Intellectual Property Colloquium. I found this reading to be very accessible – a new twist on audiobooks.
IP Colloquium is by far my favorite legal podcast. Professor Lichtman has great guests and provides thoughtful commentary. This Shakespearean treatment of an appeal hearing is inspired.
(Nice summary of the background of Bilski, and what’s at issue, on Bill Trout’s blog).
And, some nice quotes from the justices, trying to figure out the limits of patent protection. Could a patent protect –
“somebody who writes a book on how to win friends and influence people?””horse whisperers?””a method for speed dating?”
“a great wonderful, really original method of teaching antitrust law?”
“actuarial tables and risk formulas?”
In the meantime the CAFC is applying its “machine or transformation” test from its en banc ruling in In re Bilski. A recent example of this is Prometheus Labs v. Mayo, issued on September 16, 2009, where the patentable invention was a “pro-drug that upon administration to a patient converts to 6M-P, which are used to treat inflammatory bowel diseases (“IBD”) such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.” The CAFC held, among other things, that patent law does protect the transformation of natural phenomena where a method “transform[s] an article into a different state or thing.” This case will be an important contribution to post-Bilski law as applied to life science-based method claims, assuming Bilski emerges from the USSC relatively unscathed.
Update: the recording of the actual oral argument in Bilski is here (mp3 file).
Final judgment in Sony v. Tenenbaum entered by Judge Nancy Gertner today. The 30 day appeal clock starts to run. Should be interesting to see what the First Circuit does with this one, although I suspect that the betting is heavy in favor of quick affirmance.
A few choice quotes from Judge Gertner’s opinion, which is provided in full below on scribd.com.
“the Court, deeply concerned by the rash of file-sharing lawsuits, the imbalance of resources between the parties, and the upheaval of norms of behavior brought on by the Internet, did everything in its power to permit Tenebaum to make his best case for fair use.…The Court did what it could to focus the issue, notwithstanding what can only be described as a truly chaotic defense.”
…
Tenenbaum “tailor[ed] his fair use defense to suggest a modest exception to copyright protections,” he “mounted a broadside attack that would excuse all file sharing for private enjoyment. It is a version of fair use so broad that it would swallow the copyright protections that Congress created, defying both statute and precedent.”
…
“As this Court has previously noted, it is very, very concerned that there is a deep potential for injustice in the Copyright Act as it is currently written. It urges – no implores – Congress to amend the statute to reflect the realities of file sharing. There is something wrong with a law that routinely threatens teenagers and students with astronomical penalties for an activity whose implications they may not have fully understood. The injury to the copyright holder may be real, and even substantial, but, under the statute, the record companies do not even have to prove actual damage. “Repeatedly, as new developments have occurred in this country, it has been Congress that has fashioned the new rules that new technology made necessary.” … It is a responsibility that Congress should not take lightly in the face of this litigation and the thousands of suits like it.”
The BLS Discovery Pilot Project will be implemented on January 4, 2010 and was developed as the result of a joint effort of the BLS judges and the BLS Advisory Committee, in an effort to address the increasing burden and cost of civil pretrial discovery, particularly electronic discovery.
The guiding principal of the BLS Pilot Project is to tie the scope of discovery to the magnitude of the claims at issue. The BLS judges will work with the parties to determine the scope and timing of permitted pre-trial discovery, taking into consideration the needs of the case, the amount in controversy, the parties’ respective resources, and the complexity and importance of the issues at stake.
In a move similar to the “automatic disclosure” that has been in effect in the federal court system for many years, each party participating in the BLS Pilot Project will be expected to produce at the outset of the case “all reasonable available non-privileged, non-work product documents and things that may be used to support that party’s claims, counterclaims or defenses.” After the initial production, the parties and the BLS judges will consider other pre-trial discovery methods, including numerical and time limitations and limiting the persons from whom discovery may be sought.
With respect to electronic discovery, the scope of such discovery will be governed by “the nature and scope of the case, relevance, importance to the court’s adjudication, expenses and burdens.” If the parties are unable to agree, the BLS judges will conduct an electronic discovery hearing, to address the scope of allowable proportional electronic discovery and allocation of its cost.
Chief Justice Rouse states that the Pilot Project will be in effect initially from January through December of 2010. Participants in the BLS Pilot Project will be asked to provide feedback so that data may be gathered and analyzed. Chief Justice Rouse states that the Pilot Project’s efficacy will then be evaluated and refined for future use.
Whether the BLS Pilot Project will have the desired affect of streamlining and reducing costs associated with the discovery process is yet to be determined, but kudos to the Massachusetts Superior Court and the BLS for at least making an attempt to fix the burdensome and expensive discovery process which, in its current state, often makes resolving a case on the merits cost prohibitive.
I’ve been getting emails like the one below for months. Maybe if I get one from a prospective client in Nigeria I’ll head over for a visit …..
Dear Desired Lawyer/Lawfirm,
Greetings to you from Nippon Steel Corporation
With all due respect, please kindly confirm the receipt of this mail if you are in a position to represent on our company in matters of delinquent accounts.
We contact you to represent our company after a careful review of your profile. We are of the opinion that you represent us in the United States of America in order for us to recover monies due to our organization by our American clients.
In order to achieve these objectives a good and reputable lawyer or law firm will be required to handle this service. Please advice once you take in this issue.
P.S. If you are not in the position to represent us we would be very glad if you could refer us to any law firm in North America or Canada that could.
Once more thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to read this mail.
Your truly,
Akio Mimura
Director and Chairman
Nippon Steel Corporation
6-3, Otemachi 2-chome, Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo 100-8071, Japan.
Email: amimura@discuz.org
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