Posted tagged ‘legal innovation’

Judge Rakoff Holds Bank and Regulator to a Higher Standard

November 30, 2011

The Wall Street Journal just ran a noteworthy article on Judge Jed Rakoff’s path-breaking judicial opinion.  Judge Rakoff, a federal trial court judge who sits in the Southern District of New York, recently refused to approve a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Citibank because the settlement omits any facts that would [...]

Research Spotlight: Beyond the Board of Directors

August 27, 2011

In a Wake Forest Law Review article, FSU Law professor Kelli Alces provides a novel and intriguing recommendation to re-shape how corporations are governed in America. Her recommendation is to eliminate the board of directors as the ultimate decision-maker. From a legal realism perspective, which looks at human behavior as a driver of legal outcomes, [...]

Letter or Spirit?

January 6, 2011

Business Insider posted a story recently about Facebook and the news the company has made working with Goldman Sachs to obtain significant capital investment without going public. The story boils down to Facebook wanting to trade stock for a capital infusion. There is no shortage of people wanting to invest in Facebook stock. A thorny [...]

Louis Vuitton Wins a $32 Million Trademark Judgment

September 2, 2009

That’s a pretty big sum for a trademark infringement case, litigated in a federal court in Northern California. What is interesting is it wasn’t levied against some knock off artists directly. Instead, the charge was contributory infringement (kind of like aiding and abetting) against web site hosts that allowed fake L.V. hand bags to be [...]

The Patent Piler

April 25, 2009

I met Allan Tokuda when I was a Teaching and Research Fellow at Northwestern University. I was helping teach a course on Innovation and Invention in the engineering program. Allan was one of the brighter and more inquisitive students. I knew he had some remarkable qualities when, before class one day, he took out a [...]

What A Business Plan Competition Judge Looks For

March 26, 2009

Successful entrepreneurs write good business plans. Good business plans win competitions. I routinely conduct business plan competitions in my entrepreneurship class. As part of the job, I have to recruit savvy and successful entrepreneurs to serve as judges for each competition. Someone who I have often asked to judge is Dan Brown, President of Loggerhead [...]

Kauffman Foundation Lecture

March 25, 2009

I just finished leading an intellectual property workshop for entrepreneurs here in Houghton, MI. The event was sponsored by the SmartZone, a local high-tech business incubator. The FastTrac TechVenture Program is a learning program administered by the Kauffman Foundation. Here are some of the topics covered in this program: Determine market opportunities and business strategies [...]

The anti-Creative Commons

February 8, 2009

A few weeks ago I was part of a panel on intellectual property controversies at Michigan Tech. One of the comments I made on the panel is that most intellectual property law innovations have been developed by regular people taking intellectual property law into their own hands. For example, Creative Commons, Science Commons and Open [...]

Pimp My Trademark

February 5, 2009

I recently watched the MTV show “Pimp My Ride“, in which people with junkers contact the show with the hopes of getting their cars souped -up. The show I happened to watch involved a pretty beaten up Honda Civic. During the car’s transformation, the team installed Lambo doors on the Civic. Lambo doors are car [...]

Law 2.0 – Harnessing the Web to gather legally relevant data

February 1, 2009

The Web has transformed how we gather, process and view information. Yet, the legal system has largely ignored the Web’s vast potential to settle legal issues. Just one possible way for the Web to improve the efficiency of legal determinations is through online surveys, which are cost efficient and quickly obtained. Surveys are often used in intellectual [...]


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