Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Round Up of Good Stuff

I'm back in Miami, but very very tired. The conference was great fun, and I learned (and ate!) a lot, but the journey home was long. Got up early this morning (before the hotel was serving breakfast), drove from beautiful Santa Fe to Albuquerque, changed planes in Dallas, then finally got home around dinner time.

So here are short links to some blog stuff that hit my feed reader. Several deserve more reaction or praise, but I haven't the energy.

  • Talkleft, CEO Paid To Go To Prison. You are a financial services provider. Your CEO is going to jail for 18 months and is fined $2 million. Let's pay him $4,611/day plus a $2 million bonus to make up the fine, plus more bonus to be announced.

“the CIA's credibility has never been lower. Crazy people no longer believe the CIA is implanting a chip in their heads to listen to their dreams. They just don't think they can pull it off. It's a sad day for America when even our paranoid schizophrenics realize they don't need to wear the alumnimum foil hats anymore.”

The Houston journal wants a final draft of the paper in two weeks, so I think I'll do fixing and tidying before posting anything. If anyone is really keen to have it now and will promise comments in exchange for an e-copy now, drop me a note.

Posted in Blogs | Comments Off on Round Up of Good Stuff

Not Just Liars. Bad Ones.

Eric Muller is justifiably outraged at the Administration's two-faced, political, logically inconsistent approach to information releases. See IsThatLegal?.

Indeed, how is that letting 9/11 families discuss the contents of their family members' last words would help the terrorists, so it has to be secret, but it's ok to release lots of info about Padilla, disclosing sources and methods, and not incidentally smearing him while the Supreme Court deliberates?

I'm sure the answer is related to why it is that losing a CIA director at a time when there won't be a real replacement named until after the election is harmless, but losing Rumsfeld would be a terrorist victory.

Posted in National Security | Comments Off on Not Just Liars. Bad Ones.

Structured Procrastination

Brad DeLong points to an essay by John Perry called structured procrastination. Who would have imagined there was such a nice name for one of the organizing principles of my life.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Structured Procrastination

‘Trademark in Transition’

I'm off to Santa Fe today to speak at a symposium organized by the University of Houston on “Trademark in Transition”. This is a slightly terrifying thing to do as I do not, in my heart of hearts, think of myself as a trademark lawyer.

The other presenters are Graeme Dinwoodie, Stacey Dogan, Bill Landes, Mark Lemley and Glynn S. Lunney, so I will be surrounded by many of the stars of US trademark law, not to mention Thomas McCarthy, author of the finest US trademark treatise. What am I doing in this august company? Well you might ask. And I did. It seems, according to the organizers, that I am on the program because they wanted something a bit 'offbeat'. Now 'offbeat' is not the first word you might think of when you think of trademark law, a subject whose charms center on its basically commonsensical approach to problems and the relatively high quality of the draftsmanship of the most important governing of its statutes, the Lanham Act. (Hey, you think the Lanham Act is bad, let me introduce you to environmental law!)

Emboldened by the organizers' admission as to the reason for my presence, I have written a weirder-than-usual paper called “When We Say US™, We Mean It” which discusses who if anyone owns a country's name, and ccTLD names, and related .com names. If nobody laughs in the wrong places, I may put it online after the conference, or I may wait until I get a more polished version.

Posted in Talks & Conferences | 2 Comments

Good Thing He’s Joking

This Chun fellow could be very dangerous if we didn't all know that academic blurbs are written by university administrations and forced on unwilling shy and retiring academics.

That said, I genuinely believe that some of my colleagues really are the leading authorities on certain things. But better not to name names.

Posted in Blogs | 1 Comment

Anchorage Daily News Says, “Good Suit”

The Anchorage Daily News editorialized in favor of the Frontier Travel case today.

Continue reading

Posted in Law: Right to Travel | 2 Comments