Teaching Away

Unexpected and Fruitful IP Law, Design & Economics.

Class D21/389 is full of awful Chess Design Patents: WWI Chess, 9/11 chess, Barber chess, Dinosaur chess, Hip Hop chess, African American History chess, SciFi chess, Animal chess, Booze chess…

Its almost worth starting a tumblr just for bad chess design patents.

I like hardware chess (above). Here are some more:


As in so many other inquiries in the law of contracts, the search for anything resembling a litmus test is futile.

Corbin on Contracts: 3rd Party Beneficiaries

Navy now allows lower case:

“AUTHORIZED TO USE STANDARD, MIXED-CASE CHARACTERS IN THE BODY OF NAVY ORGANIZATIONAL MESSAGES.” npr


In March, James Clapper told Congress that the NSA does not gather data on “millions of Americans.” He now says he answered in “the least untruthful manner” possible.

economist

Quote reblogged from Lawyerin'

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.

Milton Friedman. (via arishahdadi)


By: Kapil Ghagat bhagatkapil


The contract itself is 2,306 pages long — which demonstrates that detail alone cannot be counted on to prevent disputes.

SA Healy Co. v. Milwaukee Metro Sewerage, 50 F. 3d 476 (7th Cir 1995), via Quotable Posner

Appellate lawyering is an over-verbalized activity. There is, as we have remarked before, little appreciation of the power of images even in cases, such as trademark cases, in which visual impressions have controlling legal significance. The appellate lawyer’s adage might be, a word is worth a thousand pictures. ‘Tain’t so.

US v. Barnes, 188 F.3d 893 (7th Cir. 1999)(Posner). via Quotable Posner

It seems that many respectable people are prepared to be more critical of a novel written by a private individual than they are about a murder threat issued so boldly by a man with state power…
In the responses of a liberal society to this direct affront, there has been altogether too much about the offended susceptibilities of the religious and altogether too little about the absolute right of free expression and free inquiry. One can and must be ”absolute” about these. Unlike other absolutisms, they guarantee rather than abridge the rights of all - Khomeini included - to be heard and debated.

Christopher Hitchens on the Rushdie Fatwa NYTimes 1989


  • 100daystyleradamsmith:

Wired Magazine’s; “ONE HUNDRED FLOW CHARTS BY THE MOST INTERESTING PEOPLE  ON THE EARTH RIGHT NOW”

100daystyleradamsmith:

Wired Magazine’s; “ONE HUNDRED FLOW CHARTS BY THE MOST INTERESTING PEOPLE  ON THE EARTH RIGHT NOW”


Roundheel: (1950’s slang) a promiscuous woman; easily persuaded, a pushover.


Joyce is a kind of poet and also an elephantine pedant…

George Orwell nails it. Inside the Whale, 1940.

I generally like using Rightsignature.com for signing contracts. But recently, its been mangling my PDF documents.

I just sent a client a document with all the capital “A”s removed! WTF right-sig?

/Rant Over.