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Two veterans of the Supreme Court bar argued forcefully ' and inconclusively ' on March 29 in a high-stakes dispute over how easy it should be for a patent holder to win an injunction against an infringer.

Features

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of Domino's Pizza in a case brought under &sect;1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by the sole shareholder of a corporation who alleged that Domino's breach of several contracts with the corporation was based upon racial animus toward him. <i>Domino's Pizza, Inc. v. McDonald</i>, 126 S.Ct. 1246 (2006).

House Panel Clears Anti-Internet Gambling Bill Last month, a U.S. House committee approved a bill aimed at stifling the $12 billion Internet gambling industry by prohibiting businesses from accepting credit cards and other forms of payment. The bill, endorsed by voice vote in the House Financial Services Committee, would enjoin a gambling business from accepting credit cards, checks, wire transfers and electronic funds transfers in illegal gambling transactions. &#133;

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Until the recent decision in <i>Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna</i>, 126 S.Ct. 1204 (Feb. 21, 2006), there was some uncertainty as to how claims of illegality would fare against attempts to enforce arbitration agreements. The decision did not turn on whether the contract was void or voidable, as did earlier lower court decisions, but simply on whether the illegality claim was directed to the underlying contract or the arbitration clause itself. Relying on <i>Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood &amp; Conklin Mfg. Co.</i>, 388 U.S. 395 (1967), the Court treated the illegality claim in the same manner as a claim of fraud in the inducement and held that 'unless the challenge is to the arbitration clause itself, the issue of the contract's validity is considered by the arbitrator in the first instance.' 126 S.Ct. at 1206.

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As more law professors are tapping away at their computers on blogs that cover everything from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to the death penalty, they also may be chipping away at the ivory tower.<br>An increasing number of law professors are using blogs ' online journals or newsletters ' to break free from traditional modes of legal scholarship. With an immediacy and ability to reach millions of readers, blogs are proving an attractive vehicle among legal scholars for spouting and sharing ideas.<br>But they are also raising concerns that they may lead to a 'dumbing down' of the profession.

In an important decision interpreting the fair use provision of the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. '107), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently held that downloading full copies of copyrighted material without compensation to authors cannot be deemed 'fair use.' In <i>BMG Music v. Gonzalez</i>, Judge Frank H. Easter-brook, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, rejected the defendant's argument that she was immune from liability because she was merely sampling songs that she had downloaded from the KaZaA file-sharing network on a 'try-before-you-buy basis.'

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On Feb. 7, 2006, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a judgment of trademark infringement in favor of manufacturers of tanning lotions against several unauthorized distributors. The defendants had paid for preferential search engine listings when computer users searched for plaintiffs' trademarks and has also placed plaintiffs' trademarks in the metatags of their Web sites (metatags are internal Web site coding often used by search engines to identify the content of Web sites).

Features

Two veterans of the Supreme Court bar argued forcefully ' and inconclusively ' on March 29 in a high-stakes dispute over how easy it should be for a patent holder to win an injunction against an infringer.