Results tagged “electronic resources” from Pierce Law Library

Core documents related to the history of copyright in the world form a digital archive of primary sources on copyright from the invention of the printing press (c. 1450) to the Berne Convention (1886) and beyond.  There is a very nice interactive timeline that indicates important legal documents relating to copyright law by language.  Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing, Inc. (1903) is the last case listed for U.S. American English.  There is even a cartoon about the outcome of the Bleistein case. The site offers access to core documents for Germany, France, Britain,  Italy and the US.

http://www.copyrighthistory.org/

The PTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board issued a precedential opinion in February concerning sound marks. Well-known sound marks include the NBC chimes and the Microsoft start-up melody.  The decision in the case, In re Vertex, 89 USPQ2d 1694 (T.T.A.B. 2009) (77 PTCJ 424, 2/27/09), decided by the Board Feb. 19, 2009, may significantly impact trademark owners' ability to register and enforce sound marks.  Read more from this analysis piece on BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal - 77 PTCJ 685.

http://0-iplaw.bna.com.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/iplw/

The "machine-or-transformation" test described by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit can often be met with added claim limitations, practitioners said during a Feb. 18, 2009,  BNA-sponsored audioconference.  Practitioners Kenneth N. Nigon of RatnerPrestia, Valley Forge, Pa., and Stephen C. Durant of Duane Morris, San Francisco, were featured in the conference on drafting claims and seeking to reissue patents put in doubt by the court's Bilski decision.  Read more on BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal online 77 PTCJ 662.

http://0-iplaw.bna.com.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/iplw/

In Rescuecom v. Google, the Second Circuit found on April 3, 2009, that selling trademarks as search engine advertising keywords can qualify as a "use in commerce" under the Lanham Act. According to an analysis piece in BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal, the holding broke "from Second Circuit precedent and may benefit trademark holders seeking to prevent search engines and competitors from profiting off their protected marks."  Read more at 77 PTCJ 688.

http://0-iplaw.bna.com.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/iplw/

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear U.S. v. Stevens  - a case involving videotapes of dog fighting in its October session.  At issue is the First Amendment's free speech clause and whether to allow the government to make it a crime to sell videotapes or other depictions of animal cruelty.

SCOTUSblog

Do U.S. courts have jurisdiction over Iraq for claims involving hostage-taking and torture that occurred during Saddam Hussein's regime?  Oral argument today (Monday, April 20) at the U.S. Supreme Court in a consolidated case that includes Republic of Iraq v. Beaty and Republic of Iraq v. Simon. 

Both cases go back to the first Gulf War in 1991. The first, Republic of Iraq v. Beaty, was brought by the children of Kenneth Beaty and William Barloon, U.S. citizens who were living in Kuwait after the Persian Gulf War ended in 1991.  Both were detained by Iraqi authorities and subjected to squalid conditions and beatings.  The other, Republic of Iraq v. Simon, involves Robert Simon, a CBS news reporter, and his cameraman, Roberto Alvarez. Both were kidnapped and tortured by Iraq in 1991.

The law in question is the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) that permits lawsuits against state sponsors of terrorism "for personal injury or death that was caused by," among other things, torture and hostage-taking.

SCOTUSblog 
Supreme Court Argument Calendar

This week the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case of Savana Redding, a 13-year old middle school student in Arizona who was suspected of carrying prescription drugs to school for non-medical use.  Acting on a tip from another student, she was strip searched, but no pills were found.  Her mother sued and the District Court found in favor of the school.  The Ninth Circuit upheld the ruling, but the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc reversed saying the school needed greater justification for a strip search than for other types of searches allowed since the 1985 decision in New Jersey v. T.L.O. 

The Case:  Safford United School District No. 1, et al., v. Redding

Oral Argument Calendar
SCOTUSblog analysis:  http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Safford_United_School_District

Sixteen reels representing a unique microfilm collection covering the Houston Mutiny and Riot Records of 1917-18 will be digitized and made available by LLMC-Digital.  From the LLMC-Digital Newsletter:  "The mutiny and riot occurred during one of the largest race riots in U.S. history, resulted in the largest murder trials ever held in this counrty, and culminated in 19 executions and 91 terms of imprisonment."  LLMC-Digital plans to have the first materials from this collection mounted on their site by mid-summer.

Read more on Blackpast.org.

LLMC-Digital:  http://0-www.llmcdigital.org.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/Default.aspx

LexisNexis Academic is an outstanding service for researching news, business, and legal topics. It contains sources from all over the world, drawn from print, broadcast, and online media. An impressively deep backfile lets you find contemporary accounts of events that took place decades ago. The main strengths of Academic include:

News, current events, and commentary

• Newspapers and new magazines, including major publications from the U.S. and around the world and local publications from all 50 states
• TV and radio broadcast transcripts
• Wire services
• Blogs and web-based publications
• Subject indexing to take you right to editorials, critical reviews, science, business, sports and other news categories

Business

• Business news and analysis publications
• Industry and market news for sectors ranging from petroleum extraction to education
• Company information, including SEC filings and company profiles
• Country profiles and business conditions

Legal

• Law reviews and journals
• U.S. case law, including case summaries, headnotes, and Shepard's Citations for all federal and state courts
• U.S. statutes
• Canadian and European case law and legal materials

LexisNexis Academic:  http://0-www.lexisnexis.com.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/us/lnacademic/

Today, the value of using Zotero to collect and maintain my research paid off.  I had printed a copy of a law review article and then loaned it to a colleague.  I wanted to refer to something in the law review later and asked my colleague if s/he still had the print copy.  S/he had disposed of it and neither of us could remember the author or journal, but we vaguely remembered the title and year.  Not knowing where I found the article originally meant re-searching numerous indexes and databases.  If I found the article online it was possible that I had saved it to Zotero.  Before I started the re-search I opened my Firefox browser and pulled up Zotero.  In my research folder I found the article. 

If you would like to save yourself from re-search as I did, give Zotero a whirl.  I'm happy to help you getting started.  Just ask!

http://www.zotero.org

Westlaw rolled out a new database to search Markman orders from federal district courts.  It is MARKMAN-ORDERS. 

From Westlaw's E-Lert Newsletter:  "A Markman order is a pretrial order in which the federal district court construes the meaning of key words in patent claims. A Markman order might construe claims from multiple patents at once."

In the MARKMAN-ORDERS database "you can retrieve documents and patent file history from the underlying patents by clicking the appropriate links on the Links tab. (Note: These links do not appear when you retrieve a Markman order from the DCT database.) If you are viewing a patent that had been the subject of a Markman order, you can retrieve the Markman order by clicking the appropriate link at the KeyCite® history or Graphical KeyCite display."

http://lawschool.westlaw.com/

An article with helpful advice on researching international human rights law is in the April 2009 issue of AALL Spectrum.  The materials one must use and become familiar with to properly research international human rights law do not form a neatly packaged bundle.  The research guide starts with the basics and the author, James W. Hart, provides a well thought out and short list of materials one might consult to get started.  One can also run a subject search in the Library's catalog, MelCat, on "human rights" to see what resources are available on the library shelf.

http://www.aallnet.org/products/pub_sp0904/pub_sp0904_HumanRights.pdf

IMPORTANT: The SSRN website will be unavailable from approximately 6:00 p.m. EDT Friday, April 10 to 7:00 a.m. EDT on Monday, April 13 because they are upgrading their database to allow for broader international content.

SSRN is the acronym for the Social Science Research Network.  It is a place to locate scholarly works in progress.

http://www.ssrn.com/

On January 22, 2009, President Obama set the "Standards and Practices for Interrogation of Individuals in the Custody or Control of the United States in Armed Conflicts" as those authorized and listed in Army Field Manual 2 22.3 (FM 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collector Operations, issued by the Department of the Army on September 6, 2006.)  LLMC-Digital recently digitized this resource and makes it available to subscribers.

Executive Order:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/EnsuringLawfulInterrogations/

LLMC-Digital:  http://0-www.llmcdigital.org.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/docdisplay.aspx?textid=29121439

Accessing the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) will change in the next month.  Ovid Technologies, a Wolters Kluwer company, is migrating access to the IFLP from WebSPIRS to OvidSP in 30 days.  The IFLP is a multilingual subject index to selected international and comparative law periodicals and collections of essays including articles and book reviews that appear in approximately 540 legal journals published worldwide.  For now, you can continue to use IFLP as previously, but if you want to try the new GUI, click on the new link, below.

IFLP: http://0-web5s.silverplatter.com.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/webspirs/start.ws?customer=fplc999&databases=IFLP

NEW IFLP link.

Recent posts in both the WSJ Law blog and SCOTUSblog talk about a recent Florida Supreme Court case, Florida v. Powell, where Kevin D. Powell of Tampa was convicted of being a felon who had a gun.  His guilty verdict was based in part on a confession to police that a gun found in the home Powell shared with a girlfriend belonged to him.  Powell was given Miranda warnings by detectives who read from a standard form.  The warning included, "You have a right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions."  Powell agreed to talk to them, and then provided the incriminating statement.  He appealed his conviction, challenging the adequacy of the warning that said 'before answering any questions.'  "The 'before questioning' warning suggests to a reasonable person in the suspect's shoes that he or she can only consult with an attorney before questioning; there is nothing in that statement that suggests the attorney can be present during the actual questioning."  That, the Court said, is a direct violation of the Supreme Court's Miranda decision. [Quotes from both blogs.]

Last week, Justice Thomas issued a stay on the Florida Supreme Court ruling in the case until the U.S. Supreme Court can act on a newly filed petition by the State of Florida on the case.

WSJ Law Blog:  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/04/06/will-the-supreme-court-remain-silent-on-florida-miranda-case/

SCOTUSblog:  http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/what-does-miranda-require/

A California lawyer changed his vote as a juror so that he could get back to his law practice should be disbarred, the California Bar Court, Review Department, concluded March 6 (In re Fahy, Cal. Bar Ct. Review Dep't, No. 05-O-05123, 3/6/09).  In its opinion, the court pointed out that Attorney Francis T. Fahy already was under suspension for misappropriating client funds, and that in the proceeding, a med mal case, he refused to acknowledge the seriousness of his misconduct in the jury room. Read more on ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct at 25 Law. Man. Prof. Conduct 171.

http://0-lawyersmanual.bna.com.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/mopw2/

The Federal Circuit held on March 20, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rule 78 dealing with the availability of continuation applications for patents is invalid because it was adopted outside the PTO's rulemaking authority.  Tafas v. Doll, Fed. Cir., No. 2008-1352, 3/20/09.  Read more on U.S. Law Week (77 U.S.L.W. 1586).

http://0-news.bna.com.cardcatalog.piercelaw.edu/lwln/