RDR Books, based in Muskegon, Michigan, won’t be publishing Steven Vander Ark’s much-anticipated “Harry Potter Lexicon.” Not any time soon, and not any time. A US District Court judge in Manhattan has issued a permanent injunction against publication of the work, finding that it infringes copyrights in the popular Harry Potter series of [...]

You can download a copy of the judge’s Opinion and Order in Warner Brothers Entertainment and J.K. Rowling v. RDR Books here at Arborlaw (PDF).
Many thanks to Dineen Pashoukos Wasylik for pulling this down off PACER.

William Patry, one of the most well-known and nationally respected copyright practitioners, has explained his reasons for terminating his long-standing Patry Copyright Blog in a final post:
http://williampatry.blogspot.com/
Patry cites the “depressing state of copyright law” and the direction of recent copyright law developments as among his personal and professional reasons for not continuing the blog.
His contributions [...]

The ABA Journal is reporting another development in attorney-client privilege concerns with the booming legal outsourcing market. Here are the questions:
Does the monitoring of cross-border communications by the United States government under the Patriot Act and the Wiretapping Act and the lack of US constitutional protection in foreign countries violate an attorney’s duty to [...]

Here’s a followup to “Trade Secret Claims No Longer Protecting Source Code from Discovery — So How’s Your Code?”:

An Arizona judge just threw out 49 breath tests performed using the Intoxilyzer 9000 by CMI, based on the company’s refusal to make the software source code available under subpoena for inspection by defendants facing prosecution for [...]

Courts have traditionally allowed software companies to avoid handing over their source code in litigation — under the legal doctrine that the software source code contains trade secrets — trade secrets which would be disclosed, and therefore legally jeopardized, by discovery to third parties. This has been particularly true within the ‘breathalyzer’ industry which — [...]

This week, the Michigan Supreme Court upheld a 1996 never-enforced voter ID law, which requires Michigan voters to produce valid photo IDs in order to vote. The law has been the subject of controversy on both privacy and economic grounds — privacy advocates condemn any linking of basic constitutional rights and liberties with identification [...]

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom
Reading this CNET commentator’s review of Andrew Keen’s upcoming book The Cult of the Amateur takes me back to a conversation with Ann Arbor venture capitalist Ron Reed in a Main Street restaurant in the dot-boom days, about the value of received culture (and the potential to lose track of [...]

According to the Michigan Court of Appeals, attorneys who are representing themselves in a case where attorneys’ fees may be awarded, are entitled to receive the value of what they would have billed to a client to handle the matter, as attorneys’ fees.
In Omdahl v. West Iron County Board of Education, the plaintiff was an [...]

Kudos to Michigan Attorney For Taking Down Goliath
Michigan patent attorney Ernie Brooks accomplished what the EU and the US Government have had a devilishly hard time doing: he won a significant courtroom victory against Microsoft. The $118M verdict against Microsoft in z4 Technologies, Inc. v. Microsoft, — F.Supp.2d. —, (E.D.Tex. April 19, 2006, Docket No. [...]