IP FIVE-BY-FIVE - THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
Matt Homann over at the The [Non]Billable Hour blog, regularly hosts a question/answer series famously known as the "Five-by-Five". For each Five-by-Five, Matt solicits five experts in an area of the law to give five responses to a specific question about the law.
The most recent episode is the IP Edition. Matt asked five intellectual property law bloggers the question: What five things would you change about IP law and/or practice?
Matt graciously asked me to participate and here are a couple of comments from each of the bloggers:
Stephen Nipper: You are your brother's keeper. One of the things IP practitioners tend to do is ignore our responsibility to spend time educating non-IP attorneys as to the basics of IP law. Lets face it, our colleagues (understandably) aren't typically very good at issue spotting when it comes to IP issues. The result is countless pain and suffering (and much gnashing of teeth). Solution? Go teach a CLE to general practitioners, blog, write articles for your local bar journal, start writing a newsletter, etc. You will be rewarded.
Douglas Sorocco: Everyone needs to take a deep breath regarding software patents. The end of the world is not near, the seas are not going to be flooding our coastal cities and software patents are not stifling development of new and useful tools and processes. Software developers are simply going to have to become better business people and accept that nothing is free and patent clearance searches must be made an integral part of the development process.
Martin Schwimmer: I also think that the development of the UDRP is an astounding success in that it represents a model of dispute resolution. There are times that a trademark owner has to walk away from the misuse of a mark in a domain because litigation will cost $50,000, but a UDRP can cost under $3000. The UDRP is not a perfect solution, but it has absolutely achieved what it set out to do. I still do a lot of them, probably one a week. I think the UDRP may pave the way to other forms of alternate dispute resolution for IP problems.
Dennis Crouch: Law Firm Life: Billing Requirements: Billing expectations at most large law firms are simply unreasonable. They disrupt family life and tend to destroy any solid mentoring program. Today, however, I�m upset with how the long hours spent billing really cramp the ability of associates to begin to build a practice of their own. The hour requirements were raised after the salary bump several years ago. Now, there are rumors that another salary jump is in store for BigLaw associates. In my opinion, rather than increasing associate salaries, firms should compete based on hours.
Mark Partridge: Eliminate rights in gross mentality: My second change, admittedly related to the first, would be to eliminate the "rights in gross" mentality. By this, I mean the notion that a trademark creates an absolute and exclusive right. One sees this tendency on both sides of the rights issue. A trademark owner may have the view that no one else may use its mark for any purpose. The junior user may believe there is no infringement if the mark it adopts is not identical to another's trademark. Both views are mistaken, of course. The rationale for protecting trademarks is preventing deception of the public, not to protect a right in gross. Again the effect of the marks in question on the public mind is critical. Some uses of another's mark are permitted because they do not deceive the public. The use of nonidentical marks on related goods may still be an infringement because they deceive the public.
These are the comments I found most interesting, you should visit The [Non]Billable Hour blog for the full posts. Each authors' blog can also be seen on the web: Nipper, Sorocco, Schwimmer, Partridge, Crouch, and Homann