Patent Law

Cease and Desist Letter Posting Not Likely to Constitute Infringement

By Les Weinstein, Michael Young, John Leo Wagner, Eric van Ginkel, and Victoria Pynchon

Reading the news in the blogosphere is sort of like reading your opponent's brief for the first time -- you're pretty certain you know that's not the law, but if you don't read the cases cited, it looks pretty nauseatingly right.  Nauseating because it makes your arguments about your client's legal rights . . . well . . . wrong. 

I rely on Plagiarism Today's Week-End Link Roll  as my IP News aggregator (thanks PT!  much appreciated!)  Yesterday, I was surprised to see PT reference a Techdirt post reporting not only Court Says You Can Copyright a Cease and Desist Letter but that you could be liable for infringement by posting on your blog a cease and desist letter sent  to you.   

This seemed wrong on so many levels (copyright, fair use, common decency, that little Constitutional Amendment we call no. 1) that it continued to bug me as I prepared for a dinner party last night and later over the kitchen sink.  I even woke up this morning thinking about it.  But I knew that someone in the blogosphere would have figured it out while I was sleeping.

How did we live without legal blogs in our lives? 

Gratitude aplenty to everyone this morning, most especially Ron Coleman over at Likelihood of Confusion who posted the answer to the question -- did the Court really say that?

Now that you're interested, just trot on over to Ron's blog to read Copyright in cease and desist letter?  Not quite.  

Thanks Ron! 

Everything is nice and orderly in my legal brain centers again.

If you want the holy writ on the Dozier Law firm's antics, read The Legal Satyricon's lengthy history and searing commentary in the post Copyright vs. Free Speech in Cease and Desist Letters.  And no, the word "chucklehead" isn't used nearly enough Marc!

I didn't mention the ADR angle -- how you can respond to legal bullying without hiring a lawyer -- a topic Professor Randazza covers better than I ever could in his post.  A must read for anyone interested in the intersection between Web 2.0 and the law and culture of intellectual property rights.

Full post as published by IP ADR Blog on January 27, 2008 (boomark / email).