The debate at [...]]]> From Prohibition to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” regulation of any kind in our country has typically led to long term legal battles.  What’s on the government regulation agenda for this year?  Pirated online materials — and they’re quickly turning into the subject of one of the most heated regulatory arguments of our time.

The debate at hand stems from a bill called SOPA, or America’s Stop Online Piracy Act, which was first introduced in the House of Representatives October 26^th of last year.  If passed, SOPA would make it a felony to do things such as stream unauthorized copyrighted content.  The bill aims to achieve to diminish the availability of pirated content online by mandating the Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek a court order against any website who is accused of copyright infringement.

What’s the issue, you might ask?  With most of the biggest names in the music, movie, and internet industries supporting the basic idea of SOPA, it can be confusing to point out what the issue really boils down to.  However, most opponents of the bill find that its major problem is a belief that it was created as a move to allow big businesses to censor the internet.  SOPA opponents also claim that the bill would end the vast pool of knowledge that is the internet today.  In fact, several internet giants such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo! came together to write an open letter to Washington in direct opposition to the bill.

Many of the bill’s opponents such as Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, argue that the passing of this law would “put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world” without actually accomplishing the goal of the bill: to reduce copyright infringement.  In fact, many SOPA opponents such as Brin agree with its supporters that piracy is an issue in need of a solution but would like a less regulatory one.

As previously mentioned, regulatory actions in our country hardly find a quick solution and this is one of them.  After a meeting in late December, legislators merely touched SOPA’s surface by looking into proposed amendments to the act.  Last week as many as 7,000 websites “dark” in protest of the act including big names such as Google, Mozilla, Wikipedia and WordPress. The mass uprising seems to have had some effect when last Friday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the vote would be postponed until a solution is found that is more widely acceptable.

Check it out here.

This week the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) announced the release of a free Mobile Ethics App giving all members of the legal community instant access to ethics advice from the convenience of any smartphone.  The new app features opinions expressed by the State Bar’s Committee on Professional Ethics with [...]]]>

Image Courtesy of NYSBA

This week the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) announced the release of a free Mobile Ethics App giving all members of the legal community instant access to ethics advice from the convenience of any smartphone.  The new app features opinions expressed by the State Bar’s Committee on Professional Ethics with references to the specific section of ethics code that the advice was taken from.

The NYSBA Mobile Ethics App contains almost 900 ethics opinions that stem back to 1964.  Downloaded summaries of the issue will also contain a direct link to the opinion, itself.  The app also sends out notifications to users when new ethics opinions are issued.  Searching on the app can be done through keyword, category or opinion number.

You can download the free app through the App Store, the Android Market, BlackBerry AppWorld or by visiting the NYSBA download page.

According to Sweetland and McManus, litigation in [...]]]> Executive Corporate Magazine published an op-ed piece in this month’s edition which features attorneys Rodney R. Sweetland and Michael McManus of firm McKool Smith.  The two principals speak on the subject of the International Trade Commission (ITC)’s considerably faster discovery proceedings in comparison to timelines set by district courts.

According to Sweetland and McManus, litigation in district courts is a drawn out process, giving the parties plenty of time to correct mistakes and add new arguments.  On the contrary, the ITC allows for very little flexibility time-wise.  In fact, the Commission begins investigations to serve initial requests on the first day permissible.  The tight deadlines allow for a speedy start, not having to wait on scheduling orders or a conference of the parties.

The two attorneys go on to explain that the biggest difference between discovery at the ITC versus in district courts is how they handle third parties.  Compared to Section 337, district court proceedings in this context go through a much simpler discovery process.  Counsel is only required to submit a subpoena from the district where information is needed, but it is not necessary that they are admitted to practice in that particular location.  The only stipulation is that the attorney be admitted to practice in a trial court.  However, ITC and Section 337 proceedings require an application to be submitted to the Administrative Law Judge for a third party subpoena who will then grant requests based on a party’s time-considered need for relevant information.

The final point in the article states that relevance and necessity limitations are strictly enforced; making it of vital importance for the advising counsel of third party subpoena recipients to note that problems sometimes arise with the execution and enforcement of subpoenas.  The article’s takeaway message is that the ITC does not allow for flexibility as is possible with district courts; Immediacy is soon becoming the new buzz word, so to speak, on the topic of discovery procedures.

The full article of Discovery is Swift and Expansive at the ITC can be read in this month’s intellectual property section of Executive Counsel Magazine and the executive summary can be read here.

Reportedly developed in under [...]]]> After a first attempt to create its own version of Apple’s trending voice assistant, “Siri,” Google is reportedly working on a new, more sophisticated model to release in early 2012.  The new voice assistant, dubbed “Majel,” will replace Android’s first attempt at a voice assistant app called “Iris” (or Siri in reverse).

Reportedly developed in under eight hours, Iris was a rival project aimed at Apple after Siri’s popularity rose with the release of the iPhone 4S.  Try as it might, Iris has been little competition to Siri whose conversational approach has allowed it to stand out among other similar apps, such as Iris, which take the voice command approach.

Google has been actively working on their new natural language persona, Majel, hoping to provide tougher competition to its Apple counterpart.  Majel is named after the “Star Trek” actress Majel Barrett-Roddenberry who, among other roles, played the voice of the Federation Computer in the latter part of the series. One of Majel’s improvements over current Android options is the evolution of Voice Actions (the use of specific commands such as “call…”) to a more subtle, natural language voice assistant.  Google has also recently purchased Phonetic Arts, allowing the app to acquire a more human-sounding voice than its predecessor, Iris.

While many critics belittle Google for its initial response to Siri by creating the lackluster Iris, Google is positive about Majel and the success it could bring the company.  Matias Duarte, Director of Android OS User Experience, explains how their approach to creating a voice assistant application stands out from the crowd:

“The metaphor I like to take is – if it’s Star Wars, you have these robot personalities like C-3PO who runs around and he tries to do stuff for you, messes up and makes jokes, he’s kind of a comic relief guy. Our approach is more like Star Trek, right, starship Enterprise; every piece of computing surface, everything is voice-aware. It’s not that there’s a personality, it doesn’t have a name, it’s just “Computer.” And you can talk to it and you can touch it, you can interact with it at the same time as you talk with it. It’s just another way to interface with the computer.”

The initial version of Majel will be limited to only Google search queries and is expected to be released no later than February of next year.

We at LLM [...]]]> On Tuesday AT&T withdrew its application to buy T-Mobile USA’s mobile licenses. It is speculated that the corporation made this move in order to avoid the publication of an internal staff report. The FCC released the document anyway, much to AT&T’s chagrin, in the belief that the merger is against the public interest.

We at LLM decided to take a look at what this withdrawal means for the future of the mobile behemoth as well as the February trial. The U.S. Department of Justice is questioning whether the proposed acquisition is even still active.

On November 22 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that the $39 billion acquisition would be contrary to public interest.  The merger, according to FCC, would result in the single largest merger in U.S. cell phone market history, nearly monopolizing the industry.  AT&T disagrees.  The company has made a statement that they are disappointed in the decision FCC made stating that the proposed merger would have created billions in new investments and jobs for the U.S. economy.

However, the internal document published by the FCC admits that jobs would be lost with this merger. In fact, FCC officials say that the suggested 96,000 resulted new jobs would actually lead to several big layoffs in order to combine duplicated positions.  Nevertheless, AT&T still states that it will not retreat on the T-Mobile acquisition.

The antitrust case trial is scheduled to start for February 13.

Honeywell has been [...]]]> WASHINGTON DC: Honeywell International continues in its legal battle against the US Justice Department for allegedly selling defective body armor to law enforcement and military agencies.  Honeywell is now pushing for sanctions against the DOJ on a case which began in 2008, accusing the Deptarment of failed litigation holds for their continued lawsuit.

Honeywell has been making a slew of e-discovery abuse allegations about the Justice Department which the DOJ blames on their e-discovery vendor and on a lack of communication among government agencies working on the case.  Honeywell explains that the Department used litigation holds on their company from separate, unrelated cases instead of information pertinent to the current case.  As a result, the company says that exculpatory documents were produced belatedly, or not at all, which has caused the case file to be irreparably distorted.

And so the mess begins to reveal itself.  With a production of over 2.9 million pages received from 77 custodians in over 40 agencies, government witnesses maintain that they were completely unaware of Honeywell’s pertinence in the data during preservation and collection.  Notices sent to witnesses supposedly never included the company’s name during this process.

Former government assistant attorney, Andrew Grosso, recently relayed to reporters that the government’s litigation processes are much more complex than those of companies in the private sector.  He adds that there have been several nightmarish cases in which government attorneys were unable to locate essential information.  (ACEDS) “I find it amusing when somebody says the government has unlimited resources.”  Grosso adds that he believes the government is currently becoming out-resourced with e-discovery technology in this case.  (ACEDS)

Unfeeling to the government’s claims of hardships during the discovery process, Honeywell continues its quest to push for sanctions saying that the DOJ’s suppressed records have distorted the truth.  The company adds that they will accept no less than an immediate production of all relevant information and a monetary compensation fee.  Agreeing with the government’s position would only allow the government to “abuse the discovery rules and impose costs on others without consequence,” says the company.

Robert Hilson of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists writes that this case will put a “bright spotlight” on the government’s ability to handle electronically stored information (ESI) that may come into play during future civil and criminal cases.

The pressure is on for government agencies to work together between departments and with their e-discovery vendor.  Litigation is expected to increase over the next year, and some say that hiring more attorneys to work for the DOJ might avoid all of the current problems they are encountering. Seeing the country’s obvious need for a better, more efficient system in addition to a desperate need to create new jobs, could the e-discovery and legal industries end up becoming the answer to our prayers?

According the document’s initial summary report, these amendments were created to help the ITC identify investigations [...]]]> On November 18th the International Trade Commission’s (ITC) recent publication, Notice of Final Rulemaking will come into effect.  The publication includes amendments to the original document created specifically to gain more information from filed public issue complaints with the ITC.

According the document’s initial summary report, these amendments were created to help the ITC identify investigations which call for “further development of public interest issues in the record, and to identify and develop information regarding the public interest at each stage of the investigation.”

Some of the amendments found in the seven page document include the following points:

• A separate statement must be made by the complainant to address the public interest at the time of filing.
• The accused person must address the issue at the time of the response.
• Public comments must be provided prior to the origin of a complaint.

The notice of final rules for gathering information on public interest issues, originally published mid-October, is expected to bring a great number of complaint filings over the next week.

Sanctions on Ceglia’s attorneys for not complying with court discovery orders could very [...]]]> One year and four months after his case was filed Paul Ceglia lost his third legal team. The case revolves around Mark Zuckerberg and an alleged contract that would entitle Ceglia to at least half of the now multi-billion dollar company, Facebook, Inc.

Sanctions on Ceglia’s attorneys for not complying with court discovery orders could very well be the main cause of this third rupture. Jeffrey Lake, one of Ceglia’s former attorneys, swore under oath that Mr. Ceglia explicitly told him not to comply with discovery requests on more than one occasion. Ceglia counters that his privacy had been breached and moved on to a new team at DLA Piper. The latest firm has asked for a three week break in order to get the new legal team in shape.

Just as we saw in our post on the fight over the Steve Jobs icon, it is no secret that when an idea gains in popularity everyone wants a piece of the pie. In this case, Ceglia wants at least half.  If the court rules that this contract did exist, Facebook will soon have to cough up what could be billions of dollars.  If not, Ceglia will be spending a long time in jail for creating fraudulent documents and emails.

Copyright claims to the Steve Job’s tribute image released soon after his death last week have gone almost as viral as the image itself.  The tribute image, a silhouette of Steve Jobs in place of the bite mark on Apple’s logo, has caused a bit of an uproar amongst independent designers and [...]]]>

The Disputed Logo

Copyright claims to the Steve Job’s tribute image released soon after his death last week have gone almost as viral as the image itself.  The tribute image, a silhouette of Steve Jobs in place of the bite mark on Apple’s logo, has caused a bit of an uproar amongst independent designers and opportunists alike in the legal claims community.  So who are some of these proclaimed “internet sensations” and do they actually have any real claim to the image?

Jonathan Mak, a 19-year old Hong Kong graphic design student was one of the first to claim his name to fame soon after Jobs’ death last week.  Mak says that he came up with and released the image back in August when Jobs retired but that it didn’t get any attention until now.  He is now receiving job offers and questions about “buying copyright.”  “I feel so unreal,” says Mak, who publicly announced that he doesn’t claim to be the first person to come up with the image, but that he did not copy anyone else’s work.

Other claims from UK-based designer who goes by the identity of “Raid71” and California-based Farzin Adeli are two more of the big names buzzing around the controversy.  Many more names will soon join the mix with lawyers already working to get designers some kind of copyright claim to the image.  Whether or not any of these claims actually go through is up in the air.  Apple, who has an aggressive reputation on copyright, trade, and patent claims, could very well use the argument that the tribute image infringes on their existing trademark.

However, while Apple may trump these individual claims there has not been much indication of a decline in the publicity surrounding the story.  The copyright story has gathered a large group of followers including TechDirt blogger by the name of “Ninja” who expresses, “I do believe that quite a few individuals had the same idea. I mean come on, it’s simple and it’s obvious…”