Intellectual Property and Open Movements (IP&OM)

Issues and developments related to Intellectual Property (e.g. Copyright, Fair Use, Patents, Trademarks, Trade Secrets) and Open Movements (e.g. Open Access, Open Data, Open Educational Resources (OER)), examined in the "Intellectual Property and Open Movements" and "Ethics of Data, Information, and Emerging Technologies" graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. -- Kip Currier, PhD, JD

Sunday, April 22, 2018

IP-Transformative Entrepreneurs or IP Law Infringers and Scofflaws? Observations from Steel City Con 2018

IP-Transformative Entrepreneurs or IP Law Infringers and Scofflaws?

Observations from Steel City Con 2018

Kip Currier: Last weekend at Pittsburgh's Steel City Con 2018, I observed and spoke with a number of sellers/vendors. These vendors, as I see it, primarily fall into 2 different categories, in terms of what they're selling.

Category #1: Unaltered Goods.

Sellers of sold-as-is comic books, action figures, toys, games, autographed celebrity photos, etc. Items whose original form has not been materially altered (transformed) from the time they were created by the original publisher, manufacturer, or company. [Other than perhaps having been previously read (in the case of comic books) or played with (e.g. action figures, toys, and games)].

Examples:

Licensed Negan-carrying "Lucille" Bats from The Walking Dead
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Lost in Space DIY plastic kit
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Rainbow (or Arc-en-ciel, en francais) Batman action figures
(...Curious to know the idea/motivation behind this incarnation of The Caped Crusader!)
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Seller with miscellaneous goods for sale...and 2 Jeannies
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Category #2: Altered Goods (--not to be confused with recently-released Netflix Sci-Fi show Altered Carbon)

Sellers of goods that incorporate, build upon, mashup (combine), transform, and/or some would say appropriate aspects of existing Intellectual Property, such as well-known trademarked logos, designs, characters, devices, etc.

The ongoing issue for consideration-- depending on where you fall on the "fan culture", "transformativeness", "IP infringement" spectrum--is whether you think the folks in Category 2 are:

Intellectual Property-Transformative Entrepreneurs?
Intellectual Property Law Infringers and Scofflaws?
Something else?

Last year I wrote about and included photos of some sellers, who I'd spoken with at Steel City Con 2017:

Some examples of works that I observed being sold at the Con veer closer to (and step over?) the edge of infringement than others that can make stronger arguments for "transformativeness". Cristine Cordero's Heroes and Heels is a good example of the latter. Cristine told me that she uses actual comic book-clipped images to bring one-of-a-kind "custom created comic book shoes" to life...and her customers' feet.

At the 2017 Steel City Con, I spoke with a seller named Jim Radeshak, who was back this year. He runs Feisty Goblin Crafts and make "Handmade Comic Book Art Items" that he sell at Conventions and on Etsy. Radeshak's business card cheekily declares that he is "Cutting up comics to make yours more valuable!" He explained that he cuts out images from comic books and free Previews of comic books. Then affixes those images to ceramic coasters, via a process of lacquer application and "baking":

Coasters made by Jim Radeshak's Feisty Goblin Crafts
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

More Feisty Goblin Crafts' Coasters
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

I also spoke briefly with Michael Fulton. He bills himself as The Wandmaker and makes "Original Hand-crafted Wands" of all shapes and sizes. The spitting image of Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander (J.K. Rowling's literary and cinematic protagonist in 2016's fantasy film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), the wand-and-magic-suitcase-in-hands would-be wizard dashed from behind his wands-covered vending table to conjure up a photo:

Wandmaker, Michael Fulton, as J.K. Rowling's Newt Scamander
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

This clever T-shirt business, called Cleveland Sleeves, "mashes up" brands, such as Star Wars characters with famous sports teams. Like this one that amalgamates the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team with a Star Wars Stormtrooper mask:

In this photo, the Cleveland Sleeves salesperson on the left sports a T-shirt that displays Pittsburgh in the recognizable block-y font from the first Superman franchise film series:

Cleveland Sleeves T-shirts and vendors
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

This T-shirt that mashes up the Pittsburgh Steelers football theme with a Stormtrooper will be loved by my university-attending nephew--who is a die-hard fan of both franchises:

In a post about Steel City Con last week, I included this creative Wrestling Art example:
An artist (or artists) has taken iconic comic book covers from, say, Marvel and DC Comics and substituted and/or added in wrestling celebrities for the original comic book characters...Mick Foley standing in for Spider-Man. Becky Lynch swapping out She-Hulk:

Some vendors also make bespoke costume apparel and gear. Like this guy, seen talking with a Star Wars fan about special ordering some accessories:

Star Wars-themed bespoke clothing and gear
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Replica "props" from diverse genres (e.g. Spy; Sci-Fi; Fantasy; Horror) are also a visible presence:

Other examples of goods for sale:

Even clothing for babies and toddlers:

And, finally...for that impossible-to-buy-for-person in your life who already has everything...

What about a colorful custom-made crocheted Mermaid tail?

Perfect on a cold night for snuggling--with yourself...

Or for cosplaying Daryl Hannah's Splash mermaid Madison, indulging in a summer seaside swim; albeit a soggy one.

Perhaps Plato had it right that "necessity" really is the "mother of invention".

Friday, April 20, 2018

33rd Annual ABA Intellectual Property Law Conference, April 18-20, 2018

33rd Annual ABA Intellectual Property Law Conference, Arlington, Virginia

[Kip Currier: The April 19th Conference sessions I attended were outstanding. Particularly thought-provoking was the "Ethical Issues in Emerging Technology" session, with panelists discussing legal, ethical, and policy implications of Wearable Technologies (e.g. FitBits), 3D Printers, and Autonomous Vehicles.

I'll be posting some highlights and photos from the sessions in the next few days.]

Friday, April 20

6:30 am – 7:45 am	LGBT Diversity Run/Walk
7:30 am – 5:00 pm	Registration • Print Café • Sponsors
8:30 am – 10:00 am	Patent: Standards Essential Patent & the Internet of Things
8:30 am – 10:00 am	Trademark/Ethics: Ethical Issues in Trademark Practice
8:30 am – 10:00 am	Copyright: International Copyright Transactions
10:15 am – 11:45 am	Patent: State of Subject Matter Eligibility Law: Its Impact on the Incentive to Innovate
10:15 am – 11:45 am	Trademark: The Dark Side of Knockoffs
10:15 am – 11:45 am	Copyright: Fair Use or Not Fair Use, that is the Question
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm	Women in IP Law Luncheon
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm	Specialty: Canada: More than Just Justin Trudeau
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm	Trademark: Current State of the Dilution Doctrine - TamImpact
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm	Copyright: Music Licensing 101: Understanding the Basics
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm	Patent/Ethics: Current Trends and Ethical Implications in IP Monetization and Litigation Financing
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm	Specialty: DarkNet: Enter at Your Own Risk
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm	Specialty: Preserving Attorney Client Privilege When Your Clients Go Global

Thursday, April 19, 2018

33rd Annual ABA Intellectual Property Law Conference, April 18-20, 2018

33rd Annual ABA Intellectual Property Law Conference, Arlington, Virginia

[Kip Currier: 1st full day of this year's American Bar Association Intellectual Property Law Conference. Lots of intriguing sessions to choose from...case in point, the 10:15 AM slot has two concurrent ones I want to attend--Trademark/Ethics: Ethical Issues in Emerging Technology and Copyright: Copyright Law and Policy Developments.

I'm also attending the Mark T. Banner luncheon today, featuring Simon Tam of the band The Slants and his legal team, who last year won a major federal trademark law case, Matal v. Tam (previously Lee v. Tam), involving so-called disparaging trademarks. The case presented potentially significant implications for free speech and economic interests. Tam and his band spoke as part of a very thought-provoking panel at Duquesne University last April, before the U.S. Supreme Court had announced its decision in June 2017. The Slants prevailed, in a unanimous decision.

I talked with Tam after the April 2017 panel about the case and he insisted on having his bandmates sign the band's poster I'd purchased.

It will be interesting to hear thoughts from the various parties a year later, regarding post-Matal v. Tam implications...]

Thursday, April 19

7:00 am – 5:00 pm	Registration • Print Café • Sponsors
7:15 am – 8:30 am	Conference Connections New Members • First-Time Attendees • Young Lawyers
8:30 am – 10:00 am	Patent: Impact of Heartland on District Court Litigation
8:30 am – 10:00 am	Trademark: From the Practitioners' Perspectives: Managing Discovery in Trademark Cases: TTAB vs. Federal Court
8:30 am – 10:00 am	Copyright/Social Media: #Ad Disclosures
10:15 am – 11:45 am	Patent: Ask the Office: Hot Topics with the USPTO Commissioner for Patents
10:15 am – 11:45 am	Trademark/Ethics: Ethical Issues in Emerging Technology
10:15 am – 11:45 am	Copyright: Copyright Law and Policy Developments
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm	Mark T. Banner Award Luncheon Honoring Simon Tam and his legal team during a special presentation.
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm	Patent: Coming Together: Worlds Apart
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm	Trademark: Proving a Negative: Best Practices for Prosecuting and Defending Non-Use Abandonment Proceedings in the US & Abroad
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm	Copyright: The Right of Publicity
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm	Specialty: Growing Your Start-Up IP Practice
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm	Trademark/Copyright: Fictional Characters in 3D
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm	Specialty/Ethics: Multijurisdictional Practice and the Modern Ethical IP Attorney

Sunday, April 15, 2018

A Nexus of Fan Culture and IP: Steel City Con Cosplay Pics...AND the Real McCoy--err, Eden; Steel City Con, April 13-15, 2018

Kip Currier, "A Nexus of Fan Culture and IP:
Steel City Con Cosplay Pics...AND the Real ~~McCoy~~ Eden":

Chewbacca and Frenemies
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Jurassic Park ranger "Show & Tell"
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Star Wars Families: They're Just Like Us!
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

3 Jawas and a Stormtrooper walk into a Bar...
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Holy Sith!
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

R2D2 chillin' at Steel City Con
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Black Sheep of the R2D2 Clan

Enter the Marvel Heroes...
Captain America: The First Avenger
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Spider-Man striking a pose
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Don't Mess with Cap and Ms. Marvel
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

(Hey, Phoenix....We Told You--No Avengers v. X-Men dustup right now...the Disney/Fox merger HASN'T been approved yet!)
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

And at the other side of the Thunderdome...Enter the DC heroes...
(Green) Arrow and Black Canary
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

The 1st Flash....Jay Garrick
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Clark Kent and Zatanna
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

The Joker...sporting REALLY good hair product!
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Shades of a DC Marvel meet cute?...
--"Joker, say Hello to Silk"
--"Silk...meet Joker"
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

"Fox and Friends" 2.0...
It's "Flash and Friends"
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Newt Scamander...Have Wand Will Travel
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

A magnificent Maleficent
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

"Uh, guys...I'm here for the Game of Thrones Season 8 Extras Audition..."

Freddy Krueger (...and Frozen's Elsa in the back left. Yikes!)
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Michael Myers
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Kylo Ren, Negan, and Lucille
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

King Ezekiel (AKA "not your king", "not your majesty", "just some guy") sans Shiva...
"Excuse me...Has anyone seen a really stealthy Bengal Tiger around here?..."
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Seeing double...2 Jeannies
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

AND the REAL Jeannie herself...Miss Barbara Eden
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Steel City Con 2018, Monroeville, Pennsylvania (Greater Pittsburgh Area), April 13-15, 2018

Kip Currier; Steel City Con 2018

April 14th I attended the Pittsburgh area's Steel City Con--a several-times-a-year gathering for comic book/toy sellers and eclectic entrepreneurs, celebrities, cosplayers, and pop culture enthusiasts of all ages.

As in previous years, I spoke with some very interesting and creative small business folks, who are using Intellectual Property in novel ways. Like this example, where iconic comic book covers are transformed by adding wrestlers:

I'll be posting an upcoming piece shortly that focuses on some of these entrepreneurs.

Cosplayers (i.e. translation: costume-sporting fans) were in abundance (on a much-welcomed warm weather day!), as you can see from my pics:

2 Deadpools in SPF-compliant costumes, basking in 80+ degree F. sunshine.
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

Colonel Sanders--after a 5K run
James "Kip" Currier (c) 2018

True Story:

Kip: May I take your photo, Colonel Sanders?

"Colonel Sanders": Yes--if you can name the 11 herbs and spices in my Original Recipe?

Me: (laughing) Uh, Colonel Sanders, I can't name them... because they're protected as one of the world's most famous trade secrets.

Colonel Sanders: (Big grin--while high-fiving me!)

Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing; Transcript courtesy of Bloomberg Government via The Washington Post, April 10, 2018

Transcript courtesy of Bloomberg Government via The Washington Post; Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing

"SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TEX): Thank you, Mr. Zuckerberg, for being here. I know in — up until 2014, a mantra or motto of Facebook was move fast and break things. Is that correct?

ZUCKERBERG: I don't know when we changed it, but the mantra is currently move fast with stable infrastructure, which is a much less sexy mantra.

CORNYN: Sounds much more boring. But my question is, during the time that it was Facebook's mantra or motto to move fast and break things, do you think some of the misjudgments, perhaps mistakes that you've admitted to here, were as a result of that culture or that attitude, particularly as it regards to personal privacy of the information of your subscribers?

ZUCKERBERG: Senator, I do think that we made mistakes because of that. But the broadest mistakes that we made here are not taking a broad enough view of our responsibility. And while that wasn't a matter — the “move fast” cultural value is more tactical around whether engineers can ship things and — and different ways that we operate.

But I think the big mistake that we've made looking back on this is viewing our responsibility as just building tools, rather than viewing our whole responsibility as making sure that those tools are used for good."

The EU's latest copyright proposal is so bad, it even outlaws Creative Commons licenses; BoingBoing, April 11, 2018

Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing; The EU's latest copyright proposal is so bad, it even outlaws Creative Commons licenses

"The EU is mooting a new copyright regime for the largest market in the world, and the Commissioners who are drafting the new rules are completely captured by the entertainment industry, to the extent that they have ignored their own experts and produced a farcical Big Content wishlist that includes the most extensive internet censorship regime the world has ever seen, perpetual monopolies for the biggest players, and a ban on European creators using Creative Commons licenses to share their works.

Under the new rules, anyone who allows the public to post material will have to maintain vast databases of copyrighted works claimed by rightsholders, and any public communications that matches anything in these databases has to be blocked."

Intellectual Property and China: Is China Stealing American IP?; Stanford Law School, April 10, 2018

Paul Goldstein, Q&A with Sharon Driscoll, Stanford Law School; Intellectual Property and China: Is China Stealing American IP?

"How do you think this challenge is best addressed? How can China and other countries be made to adhere to IP agreements?

Within the confines of trade, that’s a hard question. A friend who oversaw IP policy for the USTR several administrations ago once commented to me that people thought of the USTR as John Wayne rushing into dens of IP iniquity, six-shooters ablaze, when the reality was that he was Archie Bunker shooting off nothing more than his mouth. The US and other countries have achieved important successes under the World Trade Organization’s TRIPs Agreement [Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights] with a dispute resolution process that is far more deliberate than the 301 process. But, although many sober voices have argued for this as the preferable route, it’s far from clear that TRIPs will cover all of the forms of IP appropriation that are the object of the current 301 process, or that the current administration has the will or the patience to follow this avenue. And there are other trade alternatives, such as a bilateral investment treaty with China that could draw on the IP provisions of the so-called TRIPs-Plus free trade agreements with other countries.

Paul Goldstein is the Stella W. and Ira S. Lillick Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. A globally recognized expert on intellectual property law, Paul Goldstein is the author of an influential five-volume treatise on U.S. copyright law and a one-volume treatise on international copyright law."

British Book Publishers Fear Brexit Will Bring a U.S. Invasion; The New York Times, April 13, 2018

David Segal, The New York Times; British Book Publishers Fear Brexit Will Bring a U.S. Invasion

"Much of the worry stems from a looming fight with American publishers over sales in Continental Europe. For decades, the British have had this market to themselves, selling English-language editions of books in France, Italy and every other country in the European Union.

That helped turn Britain into the largest book exporter in the world, with total sales equivalent to $6.8 billion per year, according to the Publishers Association, a British trade group. Just over half of that revenue came from exports, and the biggest export market is Europe.

Access to this market, without tariffs or the serious competition that comes with being part of European Union, has been a financial boon. Were British publishers to lose a substantial chunk of sales or face added costs on the Continent, the fallout could be dire."

Drug Company ‘Shenanigans’ to Block Generics Come Under Federal Scrutiny; The New York Times, April 14, 2018

Robert Pear, The New York Times; Drug Company ‘Shenanigans’ to Block Generics Come Under Federal Scrutiny

"At a time when researchers are using sophisticated science to develop new treatments and cures, the fight over physical samples — a few thousand pills — sounds mundane. But it has huge implications for consumers’ access to affordable medicines.

The F.D.A. says it has received more than 150 inquiries from generic drug companies unable to obtain the samples needed to show that a generic product works the same as a brand-name medicine. Some of the disputes over samples involve drugs that are costly to patients and to the Medicare program and that have experienced sharp price increases in recent years.

“Without generic competition, there is no pressure to drive down the costs of these medications,” the food and drug agency said. Under current law, it said, it cannot compel a brand-name drug manufacturer to sell samples to a generic company."