Open Data Roundtables: Using Government Data as a National Resource; Huffington Post, 3/24/16

Joel Gurin, Huffington Post; Open Data Roundtables: Using Government Data as a National Resource:

"Open government data - free, publicly available data that anyone can use, reuse, and republish - is being recognized as a resource with great social and economic value. But a number of challenges still need to be solved if this resource is to realize its full potential. Today, March 24, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Center for Open Data Enterprise are co-hosting the first of four Open Data Roundtables to make open government data more accessible and usable.

These Roundtables are being held at a time when new uses for government data are being developed almost daily. New and established businesses are finding novel ways to use data on weather, finance, demographics, energy, and more. The Obama Administration has launched programs using open data in education (the College Scorecard), criminal justice ( Police Data Initiative), urban neighborhoods (the Opportunity Project), health (Open FDA), and other areas that are critical to citizens.

The 2016 Open Data Roundtables will address four major issues that relate to federal data..."

This open-access picture book from the ‘70s shows how glorious the space race really was; Science Alert, 3/24/16

Jacinta Bowler, Science Alert; This open-access picture book from the ‘70s shows how glorious the space race really was:

"The ‘70s were an exciting time for space exploration. We landed on the Moon in 1969, the Russian Mars 2 probe explored the surface of the red planet in 1973, and things were looking bright for future of space travel.

These recently uploaded - and incredible to look at - illustrations tell the story of the space race, showing just how optimistic we all were back then, as well as some of the cutting edge research and technology from the time...

You can see more high quality images and excerpts all free on Flickr...

But if reading is more your thing, IF Magazine is another science blast from the past that we can’t get over. Launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, the science fiction magazine was only ever moderately successful during its relatively short run, but the amazing illustrations and stories inside are timeless, and give a great insight into what we thought the future would look like, from more than half a century ago.

Check out the whole collection here."

The Blue Wars: A Report from the Front; Harvard Law Record, 3/21/16

Carl Malamud, Harvard Law Record; The Blue Wars: A Report from the Front:

"The subject of this legal inquisition is a work you all know well: The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. A series of letters from Ropes & Gray LLP firmly asserted and repeatedly reminded me of the legal protections surrounding this work including trademark and copyright protections. THE BLUEBOOK A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION, Registration No. 3,886,986; THE BLUEBOOK, Registration No. 3,756,727; The Bluebook A Uniform System of Citation, 20th edition, Copyright Registration No. TX0008140199 (June 5, 2015).

The Blue Wars started in 2009 when Frank Bennett, a law professor at Nagoya University in Japan, was working on some open source software for legal citation. Professor Bennett wanted to build in a resolution mechanism for common abbreviations, for example mapping the court name “Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals” to the designated abbreviation (“Temp. Emer. Ct. App.”). The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation 234 tbl.T.1 (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds., 20th ed. 2015).

Professor Bennett applied to the Harv. L. Rev. Ass’n for permission to use the rudimentary Bluebook web site and grab the abbreviations. He was firmly rebuffed. Being an open source acolyte, Professor Bennett felt he was entitled to use those common and obvious abbreviations, so he wrote to his spiritual leader [Lawrence Lessig] for help...

These are the challenges in front of us all. What is at stake is not the future of a $36 book, it is the question of how we communicate the law so that we all understand each other; so that our system of justice can be transparent and clear; so that we all know what we’re talking about when we refer to a source. I hope we can do this together."

Donald Trump Campaign Attacked by Nature Photographers in Copyright Lawsuit; Hollywood Reporter, 3/24/16

Eriq Gardner, Hollywood Reporter; Donald Trump Campaign Attacked by Nature Photographers in Copyright Lawsuit:

"On Wednesday, his presidential campaign was hit with a copyright lawsuit over a portrait of an eagle alleged to be owned by Wendy Shattil and Robert Rozinski, identifying themselves as award-winning professional photographers specializing in nature and wildlife photography. The complaint filed in New York claims that Donald J. Trump for President has misappropriated an iconic photograph for campaign signs and has incited an "epidemic of third-party infringement.""

McDonald's Wants to Trademark a 'Simple' New Slogan; Fortune, 3/25/16

Phil Wahba, Fortune; McDonald's Wants to Trademark a 'Simple' New Slogan:

"The hamburger chain, whose U.S. sales are recovering after years of declines, has filed to register a trademark for the slogan “The Simpler the Better,” a phrase that would echo its recent efforts to streamline its menu to speed up service—long a problem for the company—and tame its bureaucracy.

McDonald’s submitted the application to the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office earlier this month.

The filing doesn’t mean the burger chain will actually use the slogan. A company spokesperson told BurgerBusiness.com, which first reported on this filing, “We routinely file intent-to-use trademark applications as part of our regular course of business. We can’t share details at this time as to how this trademark may or may not be used.” (McDonald’s has trademarked terms such as “McBrunch” without ever using them.)"

Reuters; Gilead ordered to pay Merck $200 million in hepatitis C drug patent dispute; Reuters, 3/24/16

Reuters; Gilead ordered to pay Merck $200 million in hepatitis C drug patent dispute:

"A federal jury on Thursday ordered Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O) to pay Merck & Co (MRK.N) $200 million in damages for infringing two Merck patents related to a lucrative cure for hepatitis C.

The damages award is far less than the $2 billion Merck had demanded. On Tuesday, the same jury in San Jose, California, upheld the validity of the patents, which lie at the heart of the dispute over Gilead's blockbuster drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni. Together the medicines had more than $20 billion in U.S. sales in 2014 and 2015."

To boldly go where no copyright suit has gone before; Washington Post, 3/24/16

David Post, Washington Post; To boldly go where no copyright suit has gone before:

"Many of the infringement counts (based on similarities in costume design, backdrops, logos, and the like) look pretty straightforward to me, though I’ll be interested to see what arguments the defendants advance in support of their borrowings. [Fair use, which might ordinarily be counted on to give safe harbor to a fan film, might be difficult to sustain here, given the ostensibly commercial nature of the defendant’s production and the plaintiffs’ argument that the defendants have deprived them of licensing revenues to which they are entitled.]

At the same time, I can’t quite understand why Paramount and CBS are going to the litigation mat here, even if they have good legal grounds for doing so. In a nice twist, Justin Lin, who directs Paramount’s own “Star Trek Beyond,” scheduled for release in July, has come out against the suit (tweeting “This is getting ridiculous! I support the fans. Trek belongs to all of us!”), perhaps concerned that it will turn “Star Trek” fans against the whole enterprise (including his film)."