Does spending their lives poring over minuscule differences between the designs of mundane products drive IP lawyers mad?
After yesterday’s tale of a patent lawyer ripping not one, but two letters berating the “special” insights of the examiners of the USPTO, a tipster topped that outburst by directing us to the tale of an attorney who went over the examiners and tongue-lashed some trademark judges. Because if arguing the uniqueness of water sprinklers can drive someone crazy, arguing the uniqueness of a fabric patterns creates a new kind of super-crazy.
* The saddest thing about prisons getting rated on Yelp is owning the bar down the street with fewer stars. [Simple Justice]
* Sending “LOL totes glty” is a bad idea. [IT-Lex]
* The chief of the Brooklyn DA’s gang bureau probably should have spent more time with the civil rights bureau. [NY Post]
* People don’t really pay attention to the U.S. News Best Intellectual Property Program rankings — though it’d help if they did. [Science to Law]
* UNLV’s Nancy Rapoport thinks law schools are no better than Enron. That sounds about right. [TaxProf Blog]
* When it comes to the Boston bombings, Logan Beirne answers, “What would George Washington do?” [Reuters]
* Tenure has put a crimp in the ability of law schools to excel in the ranking system that considers publication. [Ramblings on Appeal]
* Kickstarter plug: A progressive Yale student took a year off to make a documentary about a conservative activist group, the Tennessee 9-12 Project, to show civility and respect. [Kickstarter]
There’s something beautiful about watching someone have a full meltdown. There’s a primal insanity that spews forth during a complaint-filled rant. It’s what makes movies like Network and Falling Down such enjoyable romps.
Attorneys aren’t immune to meltdowns, but they usually reserve them for a legal secretary, hapless associate, or beleaguered co-counsel. Anything to keep the episode shielded from the prying eyes of ATL.
Which makes a patent attorney’s public freakout on the USPTO itself so much more entertaining.
Prepare a Bingo card for the over-the-top references you expect to see in these rants (yep, plural). Here’s a freebie for the center square: mocking the Special Olympics…
If someone asks you whether they should go to law school, here is a very safe response: “Sure, provided that you get into a top law school and can go for free.” Even the biggest critics of legal education would admit that, assuming you want to be a lawyer, going for free to an elite law school is not a bad idea. See, e.g., Professor Paul Campos, Don’t Go To Law School (Unless) (affiliate link).
How can this be achieved? It’s not impossible. As we’ve mentioned before, more than 10 percent of law students graduate with zero debt, and another 5 percent or so graduate with less than $20,000 in student loans. Some of these students receive generous scholarships from their schools; others have savings or come from well-to-do families.
But there are other options. For example, does your employer offer tuition reimbursement?
* The New York Post responds to critics of its Boston attack coverage. [The Onion]
* I’m just going to quote our tipster on this one because I cannot improve upon his commentary: “Because we should publicize every time a Donald Trump lawsuit fails.” [Chronicle of Higher Education]
* DOUBLE F**KING NEWSFLASH: this pissed off sorority girl will write the BEST cease and desist letters someday. [Gawker]
* The Supreme Court stands up to warrantless searches. Sort of. [Simple Justice]
* Sports franchise owners totally rip off the communities they supposedly serve? [Lawyers, Guns & Money]
* You’d think an intellectual property firm would know better than to commit copyright violations. [Law 360]
* Good news, law students! You can get a casebook for the low, low price of $200! [PrawfsBlawg]
* Rachel Ray sued for negligence in trying to help a teen lose weight. If the goal was weight loss, Rachel should have just forced the girl to exclusively eat from Rachel Ray’s cookbook. Nothing can turn someone off eating like that. [US Weekly]
* I hope you’ve all got your taxes finished. Here’s a fun fact: most tax cheats live in the South and the West. The two areas of the country filled with people who think taxes are evil cheat more? Go figure. [NBC News]
* A detailed look at how the Federalist Society became so powerful in American law schools. Unfortunately, it neglects the “they tend to order better pizzas for their events” gambit. [Chronicle of Higher Education]
* Remember the new, depressing, public domain Happy Birthday song? The sponsor of that contest, WFMU, is at it again with a new contest to create modern, entertaining covers of public domain ditties. Despite my ragging on the birthday song, this is a pretty cool idea. [Free Music Archive]
* Are you a young lawyer complaining about your lot in life? You’re at this site, so statistically you are. Well, quit your bitchin’! [Associate's Mind]
* The Texas Supreme Court does not value emotional attachments to dogs. This is surprising because I can think of at least 10 country songs on this very point. [Law and More]
* Mocking law school couples with a GIF from Veep? Get out of my head, UChiLawGo! [UChiLawGo]
Lateral partner movement continues in the world of intellectual property law. As we noted in Morning Docket, four partners and one of counsel are departing from Finnegan Henderson, one of the leading IP-only firms in the country.
Where are they going? What else is going on over at Finnegan? And what does the future hold for large, IP-focused law firms like Finnegan?
* An attorney from Orrick with two SCOTUS clerkships under his belt will now be arguing a case before the high court. Seems standard, but the exciting part is that this guy’s still an associate. Congratulations! [Am Law Daily]
* From Biglaw to Boutique, the Finnegan edition: five IP lawyers, including a member of the firm’s management committee, will be starting their own practice. We may have more on this later. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Calling all wannabe government lawyers! Screw the sequester; the Department of Justice is planning to add more than 100 positions in 2014. Let’s hope these budget requests are approved. [Legal Times]
* “I actually felt sick working him for him.” If you were a paralegal and your boss was allegedly trying to recruit you to be his “third wife,” you’d feel the same. Expect more on this on this later. [New York Post]
* Here are 25 Northeast law schools ranked by employment rate. At least my school wasn’t ranked dead last on this list, and that’s something to be excited about… right? [Boston Business Journal]
* Maybe more people will care about law schools when their credit ratings tank. Speaking of which, thanks to a 14% drop in enrollment, Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Albany Law. [Times Union]
* Joseph Feller, an environmentalist and beloved professor at ASU College of Law, RIP. [ASU Law]
* “I don’t believe judges should be filibustered.” Tell that to the rest of your Republican pals, Senator Hatch. D.C. Circuit nom Sri Srinivasan faced little drama at the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. [Bloomberg]
* A bipartisan gun regulation deal has been reached in the Senate, and of course the NRA is opposing it — well, except for the parts that expand gun rights. The group really likes those parts. [Washington Post]
* Trolling for patent partners? Bingham recently snagged five IP partners from DLA Piper’s Los Angeles office, including the former co-chair of DLA patent litigation department. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Time well spent: while Detroit hangs on the precipice of bankruptcy, local politicians are worrying about whether retaining Jones Day poses a conflict of interest for their emergency manager (Kevyn Orr, formerly of Jones Day). [Am Law Daily]
* NYLS — or should we say “New York’s law school” — is revamping its clinical program to kill two birds with one stone (e.g., fulfilling pro bono hours and boosting job prospects). [National Law Journal]
* For all the talk of his being a hard ass, Judge Rakoff is a nice guy after all! The judge gave an ex-SAC trader permission to go on a honeymoon after his release from prison. [DealBook / New York Times]
* If you’ve ever wondered how Lat spends his free time, sometimes he’s off writing book reviews for distinguished publications. Check out his review of Mistrial (affiliate link) here. [Wall Street Journal]
* “Lindsay Lohan is the victim.” What the Heller you talking about? LiLo’s lawyer thinks there’s a conspiracy among the prosecutors on her case that’s resulted in leaks of information to TMZ. [CNN]
* Thieves made off with 5.5 tons of Nutella. Damn you Danny Ocean! [CBS News]
* Don’t try to play Baseketball in Canton, Ohio. [Legal Juice]
* The SEC finally allows companies to distribute disclosures via social media. Welcome to the 21st Century, SEC. [IT-Lex]
* Speaking of the SEC, Mary Jo White was confirmed by the Senate. [Fox Business]
* Chief Judge Alex Kozinski: “Can I get an oy vey up in here?” [COLLive]
* Kentucky is just all kinds of screwy. Lawyer jailed for not turning over documents/running drug ring. [AP]
* Energy law was number two in law firm activity this quarter. For the billionth quarter in a row, Third Amendment law failed to crack the top 10. [AOL Energy]
* Ha! “Thus, it seems that (as has so often occurred in IP law) the focus on the problems of copyright and patent has allowed trademark law to engage, unsupervised, in a great deal of mischief.” [Law of Fashion]
* Just a reminder: Legalizing gay marriage does not end discrimination. [National Law Journal]
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Does spending their lives poring over minuscule differences between the designs of mundane products drive IP lawyers mad?
