TWoTW for July 12, 2009
This Week on The Web. Interesting articles, stories and thoughts from around the web this past week that are related to contracts, licensing, negotiation or law: AdamsDrafting Wal-Mart Case Raises Issues of Categories of Contract Language Another Instance of Semantic Ambiguity: “Buys” My Response to Someone Seeking Advice on Contract Drafting Contract Interpretation and Contract [...]
License Resale
Vinnie Mirchandani at deal architect pointed out a Ray Wang article on the resale of unused licenses. My thoughts are in the comments on Ray’s article. But generally speaking, regardless of what Ray suggests, you can’t do it in the US (or the rest of the Berne Convention countries) under most licenses which have express [...]
Caulfield on Copyright
Madisonian pointed me towards a recent decision by the US District Court in Manhattan regarding a potential satire/parody of JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Granted, this has nothing to do with software… but it has everything to do with copyright. So it’s still applicable. The Licensing Handbook Blog is the companion site to the [...]
ALI Approves the Principles of the Law of Software Contracts
As I mentioned a few weeks ago and now recently reported by Concurring Opinions, the American Law Institute recently approved the final version of the Principles of the Law of Software Contracts. If any particular state adopts these rules, I will probably recommend what commenter Sean Hogle recommended – the addition of yet another disclaimer. [...]
Interesting Tidbits
I’ve not done this before, but given that I just got off vacation and have an inbox that would scare most people, I thought a few tidbits of things passing my desk might be of interest to you: The Ideological History of the Supreme Court of the United States A White Paper on Insurance Coverage [...]
Web TOS Amendments
Eric Goldman on “Amending this Agreement whenever we want” (the Harris v. Blockbuster case from earlier this year). Dead on, as usual, so I’ll repeat his mantra here: “STOP PUTTING CLAUSES INTO YOUR CONTRACTS THAT SAY YOU CAN AMEND THE CONTRACT AT ANY TIME IN YOUR SOLE DISCRETION BY POSTING THE REIVSED TERMS TO THE [...]
UCITA redux
Ever wonder why you spend the bulk of your time inserting contract language for this warranty or that limitation of liability… only to get to the end of the agreement and then disclaim a few large bodies of law, such as the UCC or UCITA? If you’ve not had the pleasure of attending law school, [...]
A Few Licensing Issues with Amazon
Many of the technologies we use every day come with a license agreement of some sort. You might not even realize that it’s so because of where you are in the transaction chain – either as a buyer or as a seller. Content, for instance, is created, licensed/sold, packaged, re-licensed/re-sold, bundled, re-licensed/re-sold, and on and [...]
More interesting copyright issues
According to this article from Wired, Apple is involved in some very interesting copyright violation cases related to their fairplay copy protection scheme and DMCA takedown notices they provided to folks discussing how to circumvent Apple technologies. I would pay attention to what the US Copyright Office decides based on their review – and on [...]
Intellectual Property Issues in 2009
Prompted by an interesting post by James Governor on the subject of IP ownership of brands, names and even posts made through social networking sites (thanks to Deal Architect for the heads-up), I thought that starting a discussion about these IP Issues in 2009 might be a good idea. Basic premises of IP protection have [...]
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