Category: Featured

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From June 10 to June 12, 2013, the International Max Planck Research School for Competition and Innovation (http://www.imprs-ci.ip.mpg.de) and the Center for Law & Economics at ETH Zurich (http://www.lawecon.ethz.ch) will jointly organize their Fourth Workshop for Junior Researchers on the Law and Economics of Intellectual Property and Competition Law. OVERVIEW: The workshop will enable a small number of junior researchers from law and from economics to engage in an intensive, rigorous discussion of their own scholarly work. Several senior professors from law and from economics departments in Europe and the United States will provide feedback on the research projects. Keynote …

Call for Papers: Fourth Workshop for Junior Researchers on the Law and Economics of Intellectual Property and Competition Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers No Comments

The Australian Copyright Advisory Group Schools (CAG Schools), an organization representing over 9000 schools and Australia’s 3.5 million schools students urges the repeal of the Education Statutory License and relying on a flexible fair use/fair dealing regime in its stead. This position is part of the CAG School’s submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission who is currently reviewing Australia’s copyright laws. In its submission, the CAG Schools highlights several shortcomings of current Australian copyright laws as applied to education. UPDATE (Dec. 10, 2012, at 5:33 pm): Universities Australia make similar points in their ALRC submission. The CAG Schools argues that the …

Australian Educators: Repeal the Education Statutory License, Expand Fair Dealing Read more »

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The U.S. Supreme Court is going to hear today oral arguments in  Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. today. I am particularly excited about that because I am one of the signatories of a law professors’ amicus brief supporting the Petitioner. The question in this case is whether the first-sale doctrine, codified in s. 109  of the US Copyright Act, applies to copies of works made outside the United States. More directly, the question is whether a U.S. copyright holder can prevent the importation of copies lawfully made and first sold abroad. That is, wether the Copyright Act allows copyright owners to …

Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons: Regulatory Arbitrage vs. Market Arbitrage Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Featured, Stationers No Comments

The Publishers Weekly reported yesterday that “The Association of American Publishers (on behalf of five named publisher plaintiffs) and Google today announced they have settled their long-running litigation over Google’s library book scanning. According to a statement from the AAP,  Google is said to “acknowledge the rights and interests of copyright-holders,” and U.S. publishers can “choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project.” The PW also reports that “publishers deciding to have their scanned works included in the Google database can opt to receive a digital copy for their …

The New Google-AAP Settlement: Some Questions and Antitrust Speculations Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Blog, Featured, Other 7 Comments

John Degen is a writer whose day job is that of a civil servant employed by the Ontario Arts Council. He frequently launches uninformed ad hominem attacks against anyone who questions Access Copyright. Curiously, these rants are regularly tweeted by Barry Sookman, who ought to know better. Degen’s blog of September 24, 2012 states that “…there comes a point when you just get tired of listening to the shrieking crusaders who want to take away your rights. And then those same crusaders smirkingly portray themselves as Nazis, just before Yom Kippur.” What provoked Degen’s ire was a retweet of mine linking to a recently made video …

When Blogs Cross a Line Read more »