Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• First Life is refused a C&D

  Marty's post reminded me about this great anti-C&D from Linden Labs. This notice is provided on behalf of Linden Research, Inc. (“Linden Lab”), the owner of trademark, copyright and other intellectual property rights in and to the “Second Life” product and service offering, including the “eye-in-hand” logo for Second Life and the website maintained at http://secondlife.com/. It has come to our attention that the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ purports to appropriate certain trade dress and marks associated with Second Life and owned by Linden Lab. That website currently includes a link in the bottom right-hand corner for “Comments or cease and desist letters.” As you must be aware, the Copyright Act (Title 17, U.S. Code) contains provisions regarding the doctrine of “fair use” of copyrighted materials (Section 107 of the Act). Although lesser known and lesser recognized by trademark owners, the Lanham Act (Title 15, Chapter 22, U.S. Code) protecting trademarks is also... Posted Mar 01 2007, 10:57 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Things that amuse me, Copyright, Web 2.0, Law

• How is IP split between separating founders?

  AskTheVC addresses the question of what happens to IP rights when the founders go their separate ways . "Bottom line, you have a strong incentive (as does your former partner) to settle this amicably, otherwise, you both are going to be worse off." I thought it was worthwhile to dig into this a little further, though, and discuss what happens with the various IP rights a startup might acquire. Often you'll hear 3 founders say "we want everything split 3 ways", but joint ownership of IP can be tricky. Rights and duties with joint ownership are poorly misunderstood, even by many lawyers. More importantly, the rights and obligations of each owner vary by the type of intellectual property and from country to country. A joint owner of copyright in the US has different rights from a joint owner in England, and a joint owner of copyright has different rights from a joint owner of a patent. Both copyright and patent rights vest in the original author(s) or inventor(s) respectively, and both can... Posted Feb 12 2007, 06:47 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Copyright, Web 2.0, Patent, Business, Law, Entrepreneurship, Startup, NextNY

• Would you trust Zamzar with your data?

  Kevin writes about Zamzar , a free web-based service that converts audio, video and documents from one format to another (via Download Squad ). Sounds cool, but would you trust them with your sensitive data? I don't know about you, but I barely trust Google or Microsoft with this information. Should I trust what appears to be a UK-based startup whose company page provides little, if any, information about the company? In their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy , they make allusions to "respect[ing] the intellectual property rights of others" - though the language seems to be more related to a third party's protected work as opposed to any protected work you are personally uploading. The Privacy Policy also discusses, sort of, how the files are stored and accessible. Storage of User Files When users upload files to be converted Zamzar stores those files on its servers until such time as those files have been converted to the new file format. As soon as this has been done Zamzar removes... Posted Nov 03 2006, 08:37 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Security, Copyright, Web 2.0, Innovation, Privacy

• TWiL is finally out, and it's excellent

  The first episode of TWiL (This Week in Law), Denise Howell 's new podcast on the TWiT network, is (finally) out . It is excellent, which should come as no surprise given how good her previous efforts with Bag and Baggage and Sound Policy were. This episode features special guest Hank Barry along with a "regular" panel of Cathy Kirkman , Ernie Svenson , John Palfrey . Topics include the YouTube's safe harbor under DMCA, its recent licensing agreements, and the effect those agreements will have on other its competition and copyright reform in general. The name is somewhat misleading considering it was recorded several weeks ago. There were some audio issues in episode #1 but Denise said they've worked those out for episode #2. Oh, and hopefully the flat-lining TWiT can find some life after a brief vacation. Posted Oct 24 2006, 09:06 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Copyright, Web 2.0, Trademark, Audio, Podcast

• Scoble changes his mind about RSS republishing

  Robert Scoble is complaining that someone is repurposing his content . It’s one thing to use it in an online news aggregator like Bloglines and its a whole nother thing to steal my content and put a different name on it and then spam everyone I link to with trackback spam. This is content theft and its not OK. If you are advocating this is OK you simply don’t understand copyright law. Sorry, Robert, but now I'm a bit confused. You once said in March 2005 that "RSS is a republishing system" and that "by publishing RSS as full text you're buying into a system where your words will be republished in a variety of ways." Or, put another way, "put all your content into RSS like me and let the world do with your content what it likes". What you gave, in effect, was an implied license that doesn't discern between commercial and non-commercial use. Three months prior to that, you got upset when Martin wanted his feed removed from Bloglines. I see Tyme and Martin's point. I really do. I know copyright... Posted Aug 28 2006, 12:02 PM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Web 2.0

• The problem with regulating what you don't understand

  This interview would be funnier if Senator Stevens wasn't involved in crafting Internet regulation. Stevens does an amazing job (jaw-dropping, really) of explaining how the Internet works and why network neutrality is a bad thing. Choice quotes: But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free. Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet? I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? And: They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in... Posted Jul 05 2006, 06:24 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Rants, Web 2.0

• Digital music hurts the artists

  Grant Robertson looks at the impact of digital downloads and agrees with Weird Al that the artists are getting a raw deal. The artist (Grant uses the Allman Brothers as an example) gets $0.31 cents per song sold on a CD, but only $0.045 for each digital download. The format is crippled, the record label saves money in production and distribution, and the artist takes an 85% pay cut. That sure doesn't seem right, does it? The Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick have already sued Sony BMG over allegations that the bands are being underpaid for digital downloads . Among other things, it seems that these labels are deducting 15% of the total sales for "breakage" and another 20% for packaging. We should encourage digital distribution: more access and lower costs for everyone. As I've said before, "Digital music has the potential to (in Fred von Lohmann's words) 'grow the pie' for everyone - we'll have more innovation, more money for both content creators (and publishers) and technology companies... Posted Jun 18 2006, 04:20 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Music, Copyright, Web 2.0

• The Web 2.0 Trademark Debacle

  There has been a bit of controversy over O'Reilly's "Web 2.0" service mark cease-and-desist letter and their subsequent "we had to" response . I'd say Mike Arrington correctly predicted the lynching , though some are defending O'Reilly . ( Scoble is just upset he's no longer the King of Evil ). Fortunately, the issue has been resolved , but not before the PR damage was done. We're not claiming exclusive use of "Web 2.0" in all contexts. Our service mark applies only to "Web 2.0" when used in the *title* of "live events" such as conferences and tradeshows. Rob Hyndmann wrote exactly what I was thinking , especially the first and last points. First, there’s the effort (without any trace of irony, it appears) to restrict and monopolize the use of the term in connection with events held to educate and evangelize … a set of technologies that are about collaboration, sharing and open access to information. Next, there’s the threat against a non-profit, of all things, innocently trying to do nothing... Posted May 26 2006, 12:23 PM by Tim with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Rants, Web 2.0, Trademark

• Trademark Attribution for Dummies

  I was curious/shocked when I first read Jason's post last month that Wiley was demanding attribution for use of the FOR DUMMIES mark. Martin Schwimmer said it's not really a demand letter though . Wiley's letter is not a demand letter in that it doesn't allege an infringement of rights and doesn't demand cessation of activity. When pressed by Calcanis (CEO of Weblogs (now an AOL company)), Wiley acknowledged that one-time use in a title was not trademark use, and that Wiley was merely asking for attribution. However, the original letter resembles a demand letter in that it starts out with a recitation of legal rights, and asks for written assurance that Weblogs is complying with the request. On these facts, Weblogs does not have to provide attribution. If you write a letter asking someone to do something they do not have to do, then you are asking them for a favor. When asking for a favor, If you do not use magic words such as 'please', 'thank you' and 'we respectfully request,' then do... Posted Mar 14 2006, 06:17 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Web 2.0, Trademark