teachingaway

I used to litigate copyright cases. While your comment is technically true, for 98% of cases, you will need the copyright registration for any amount of meaningful copyright protection.

If you put a lot of effort into a project and don't want it stolen, please REGISTER THE COPYRIGHT.

0. Register the copyright within 3 months after you publish the project.

1. Register online at https://eco.copyright.gov/ - it costs $35 (or so) and is not particularly difficult to do.

1.1 registration is not difficult, but it is tedious and involves navigating a super-old government website that kinda sucks.

2. You can also hire a lawyer to register for you, which costs around $200-300.

3. Once you have the copyright registration, you can write a polite letter to whomever is stealing your stuff (or write a nasty letter, depending on your mood).

4. You can force them to pay you compensation for stealing your copyrighted content.

5. If your stolen stuff is being hosted by a third party provider (like imgur or whatever), you can send the host a DMCA takedown request, and the host will quickly remove the offending content.

that is just US law. Milage may vary in other countries.

edit - a lot of downvoting on this comment. Too snarky? Too anti-open-source? i thought this is useful info. Sorry to offend!

noooo! this isn't a software problem. Just hook the fan up to the bicycle wheels!

Pedal faster, fan goes faster.

Product already exists (though somewhat expensive at $200) http://www.amazon.com/Kreitler-Killer-Add-On-Headwind-Fan/dp...

but can PG write again using only the ten hundred most common words?

https://xkcd.com/1133/

yeah, it looks like they are still under traditional copyright. It's just that the purchase price is $0.00. Free as in beer.

Still, that's pretty cool!

I think it's 'malpractice' risk. Like, if a lawyer give bad legal advice on a forum, and someone reads it and follows it and then loses a ton of money because of it, and then the reader sues the lawyer for malpractice.

The plaintiff would never win the case. But lawyers like to avoid being the target of malpractice claims, even if they're super-weak / spurious / whatever.

I think that is the situation.

As a lawyer, I personally don't mind writing about the law or answering general questions on the internet. I wouldn't answer someone's specific questions about their personal legal situation though (without an engagement letter).

I think the answer is this: the law requires the exact document - a shareholder consent. It's binary. Either you have the consent or your don't. The judges don't want to be bothered with shades of gray. Allowing an exception for docs that are "close enough" would lead to long and expensive arguments about whether something was "close enough" or not.

Sure, the rule is harsh, but there's an upside. You can look at a corporate doc and know right away whether it's sufficient. No debate. It's either 100% correct, or else it doesn't pass muster.

On balance, is it a good rule? I don't know! It's just one way to write a rule, and there are some upsides (certainty) and downsides (harsh results for a clerical error).

This x 10 for legal documents. Simplify them please.

Champerty!

Champerty is the (largely defunct) rule against funding someone else's lawsuit. I always thought that was a funny word. Champerty. But TIL that it comes from the fact that in "England, litigants could hire ‘champions’ to represent them in ‘trial by battle.’ By the late 13th century, these strongmen were being compared to prostitutes, and their prevalence hastened the movement of dispute resolution to the courtroom. During the Middle Ages, this concept of ‘champerty’ — assisting another person’s lawsuit in exchange for a share of the proceeds — emerged as part of the larger ecclesiastical taboo against usury."

Yeah! right? But if I understand your project correctly, it also has every other possible continuation to that stanza in it somewhere?

These infinity monkeys wrote shakespeare:

preconizer arrythmically to be or not to be that is the question whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles spearfishes stifles nonswearer belabouring apperceptionism

http://goo.gl/j6XHOR

For a great collection of weird old patents, check out https://www.flickr.com/groups/1478617@N25/pool/

A flickr collection by LisaGenius.

there's still a registered trademark for the logo, which includes the word "SRIRACHA" in it.

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=74021095&caseType=SERIAL_N...

I help clients negotiate SAAS deals, and I like this as a template. It's better than 95% of the contracts I see. But since this is the internet, I will use the rest of this post to complain about things:

1. Formatting: One column of text is better than 2. It's digital, we don't need to cram words in to save paper.

2. Information Architecture. Contracts longer than 2 pages should have a table of contents. In most use cases, people are only looking for 1 or 2 specific terms in the contract. ToC helps.

3. Naming is Hard. Names should suggest some unique aspect of the thing they represent. In this contract, the parties are defined as "Company" and "Client." But both parties are companies. Using "Company" to refer to only one of the two companies invites confusion. Yes, it's defined. Yes, it's standard practice. But a better defined term might be "ASP" or "Host" or "Provider", etc.

4. "Herein." I don't like herein. 4.1 Herein is stuffy. No one talks like that. 4.2 Herein is ambiguous. http://www.adamsdrafting.com/herein/ 4.3 Instead, use "in this agreement" or "in this paragraph."

5. Arbitration? Going to court is a hugely expensive distraction. Arbitration is slightly less expensive and distracting. Any reason not too ask for arbitration?

I disagree. A design patent for a user interface would do the trick. So would some clever copyright registrations.

http://adlervermillion.com/user-interface-design-patents/

Not every lawyer knows/understands IP and user interface design. But if you find a lawyer who specializes in the two, and you lay the groundwork before your design is copied, you should have a strong legal position when the copycats arrive.

For an early-stage startup, it may not make sense to sink a ton of $$ into design patents. But companies with more revenue/capital should think about it.

Gray text on a light-gray background is difficult to read.

http://contrastrebellion.com/

The quantity of diligence is usually proportional to the size of the deal.

I think that link says he just won parts of the lawsuit. Other parts are still ongoing.

can't we just pass a law stating that "the patent is not being used for anything" is a valid patent suit defense?

That's how patent law worked until the 1940s. It was called the "paper patent doctrine." i.e., if you're patent was just on paper, and not used in industry, then the patent was dead.

Prof. John Duffy wrote a great paper about it last year - http://cornelllawreview.org/files/2013/10/98CLR1359.pdf

Patent trolls have been getting trounced in court for the last few months, especially in NY and CA. I suspect RPX is offering patent troll insurance now because their payout risk (exposure?) is now much lower.

The RPX insurance might still be a good idea. Just be sure to re-evaluate the current state of patent troll risk before you buy a $10,000 policy.

> Unfortunately, their projection had communication becoming faster than the speed of light in 2004.

And by 2008, information was received before it was sent!

judges here decide based on 'gut feeling' whether a title infringes or not, and then look for justification after the fact.

I think that's a fair assessment of how a lot of court cases are decided, especially where the law involves an imprecise weighing and balancing of several competing factors.

oh! That could be an error on my part. I'll double check the case.

edit: I didn't realize Pac Man was originally "Puck Man" in Japan. I added a note to the article.

Artic just copied the original Japanese name. Pretty lazy:

"The only differences between Artic's Puckman game and Midway's Pac-Man game are (1) the names of the ghost characters in Artic's game are different from the names of Midway's characters, (2) the Midway copyright notice does not appear on Artic's game, and (3) the name of the game is different. Other than those trivial differences, the Artic game is absolutely identical to Midway's Pac-Man video game described above. In fact... Artic's Puckman printed circuit board contains an error common to Midway's Pac-Man game." http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3162513435280413...

Yeah! There were a handful more like this that I wanted to add... but they never really reached a decision in court, so there wasn't much to discuss.

Frogger Clones: Road Frog, Froggy, Anirog Frogrun, Hoppit, Leapfrod, Road Frog, Road Toad…

Donkey Kong Clones: Killer Kong, Krazy Kong, Crazy Kong, Kong, Wally Kong...

I love this stuff.

> the very beginning, I wanted all my friends to be shareholders. If I had a deep, intellectual conversation with someone, I’d give them 10 shares.

Yeah, it probably violates some securities laws... but when everyone makes lots of money on the deal, there's rarely an issue. When investors lose money, they're all too happy to bring up securities law violations and fraud claims. Better to do everything by the book and not give anyone an excuse to sue you later.

I'm not a securities lawyer, but in a nutshell, startup companies should prefer a very small number of professional (and accredited) investors.

after you have potential names, here's my step-by-step walkthrough for the US trademark application process - http://adlervermillion.com/how-to-trademark-part-2-registrat...

The trademark application process, at its core, is simple data collection. Sadly, the TM Office website complicates this simple process with a set of baffling forms. Their design philosophy is “more but worse.” Only 40% of DIY apps are approved, so a TM lawyer is recommended. But if you're going to go DIY, just gird yourself for a miserable user experience.

edited the title to simply "Copyright Law Illustrated: Video Game Clones"

Side-by-side: http://i.imgur.com/vGmlRj3.jpg

The photographer is in over her head. She owns her photo, but she doesn't own the "idea" of the back of Rod Stewart's head. Not even Rod Stewart owns that "idea."

And while we can't just copy her photo, we can take another photo that expresses the same idea (Stewart's head). And since there aren't that many way to photograph Rod Stewart's rear-dome, the photos would have to be essentially identical for any copyright infringement. The photos here are not identical: the light is different, the hair is messed up differently... it looks like a losing case.

As an IP lawyer, I'd like to say that reading this draft document is super boring. The parts that I skimmed (less than 10%) was all just harmless procedural rules. Can someone point out or quote the controversial parts? Here's the skeleton ToC and a few highlights:

A: General Provisions [seems boring]

B: Cooperation [seems boring]

C: Trademarks

D: Geographical Indications

E: Patents [including genetic stuff - probably controversial]

- Article QQ.E.2387: {Traditional Knowledge, Traditional Cultural Expressions and Genetic Resources}

F: Industrial Designs

G: Copyright

- [basically Fair Use:] - Article QQ.G.Y: {Limitations and Exceptions} - "Each Party shall endeavor to achieve an appropriate balance in its copyright and related rights system, inter alia by means of limitations or exceptions... including those for the digital environment, giving due consideration to legitimate purposes such as, but not limited to: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research, and other similar purposes..."

- [DRM stuff:] - Article QQ.G.10: {Technological Protection Measures}

H: Enforcement