Author Archives: mwillee

While this space remains focused on intellectual property and all matters related, I would like to take the occasion presented by the story covered today to talk briefly about the importance of Michael Jordan. The fact that he was important isn’t questioned by anyone who lived through the past thirty to thirty-five years as aContinue reading “Michael Jordan Wins Trademark Case in China”

Need is a strong motivator, and urgent need of the kind felt in many walks of life during this pandemic will hopefully spur the kind of ingenuity that is demanded at the moment. Need during times of crisis is also not generally subject to the kinds of normal restrictions of law and regulation that mightContinue reading “Medical Technicians and IP Law”

The story of copyright in the twenty-first century tends to be one of corporate overreach, though you perhaps can’t blame big business for trying; after all, it falls to regulatory and oversight bodies to rein in the worst actions and instances of IP abuse, and those institutions don’t always appear to be up to theContinue reading “Disney’s Tweet Claims Raise Copyright Questions”

Nothing good can be said of the coronavirus, but to the extend that anything like the slightest silver lining on the darkest cloud can be seen, we can take the smallest amount of solace in the fact that banal misdeeds seem so much lesser now than they did a mere few weeks ago, and inContinue reading “Tesla, Zoox Settle Trade Secrets Lawsuit”

There’s nothing good that can’t be ruined, and nothing bad that can’t be made worse, and that holds true for intellectual property as it does for anything else in life. Take the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), for example; like any law, it has its flaws, but applied in the spirit in which it wasContinue reading “DMCA Copyright Trolls Get In On The Automation Game”

If you’ve even spent any time on Twitter (and for your sake, I hope you haven’t) you recognize it as a space largely disassociated from the world in which its users live. While there are plenty of real people engaging in genuine interactions, no one is necessarily attached to any actual identity, and thus millionsContinue reading “Japan’s Twitter Users Liable For Retweets That Violate Copyright Law”

We’ve placed an awful lot of faith in technology to fix problems and generally bail us out of issues we’ve created for ourselves as a species, from the biggest existential threats to the smallest inconveniences. Which is all well and good, save for the fact that tech has shown itself to be as smart asContinue reading “Star Trek Comic Con Panel Taken Offline For Copyright Protection Glitch”

It’s easy, in many instances, to see violations in the IP sphere to be of less consequence than other crimes we see in the news. After all, there’s no physical violence done to any of the parties in those cases, with the only harm being financial, and even that is abstract or theoretical, given thatContinue reading “Former Waymo Employee Sentenced In Trade Secret Theft Case”

There’s nothing like success to warrant a bit of added scrutiny, especially when it comes to Big Tech, specifically social media. Facebook likely longs for the days when its worst problems were questions of propriety and ownership; The Social Network might seem downright nostalgic in the face of concerns over hate speech and misinformation thatContinue reading “TikTok Adds Patent Lawsuit To Its Woes”

Should we applaud someone for doing the right thing, even if it took far too long for them to do it? That’s the question many people might have upon the news that the NFL’s Washington franchise has decided to “retire” their offensive nickname in favor of a new one. While the impetus for the changeContinue reading “Will Trademarks Derail Washington’s Name Change?”