On The Horizon: Utah Court Feeds

Rory Perry, who was blogging last week from the Eighth National Court Technology Conference (CTC8), has this exciting bit of news: "[T]he Supreme Court of Utah will soon join West Virginia in providing access to its opinions via RSS." (Link added.)

Today's New Blawg

D.C. Toedt, "general counsel of a software company and a former partner in a big intellectual-property law firm," writes By No Other, Business Law Lessons and Stories. The following is from an interesting post on how a PowerPoint presentation was used to defeat assertions of trade secrecy:

Make an effort to label your confidential documents as "Confidential" or "Proprietary." If you don't, a judge might later use that as an excuse to deny your claim that the documents contain trade secrets — if you didn't treat the documents like trade secrets, why should the court?

(On the other hand, don't go overboard with your confidentiality stamp — the credibility of your secrecy assertions may well be diluted if you unthinkingly label the menu in the company cafeteria as confidential.)

I found D.C. yesterday via Google when running a quick search on IP Memes, a weekly newsletter from TechnoLawyer on intellectual property issues related to emerging technologies. Google told me that Nancy at the Stark County Law Library Blawg had mentioned that IP Memes had mentioned D.C.'s post mentioned above. Ya follow?

Good, because you'll no doubt want to know why I was sifting search results for IP Memes during my busy day yesterday. I've been an IP Memes fan and subscriber for awhile, and was thus was pleased and honored when its publisher, Neil Squillante, asked me to begin serving as one of its co-authors. He did so at the suggestion of the World's Most Connected Man, Buzz Bruggeman, someone I know purely because we both write these weblog thingys that tend too often to be dismissed as insignificant.

Some IP Memes logistics are still being worked out, but one thing I do know is my contributions also will be available for what hopefully will be your reading pleasure here at B&B.

Clue, Line 2

Ernie Svenson: "[A] caveman wouldn't regard a cellphone as a particularly significant tool, unless maybe he could use it to smash rocks."

Vote On Your Favorite Presidential Candidate (And Full Contact Sport)

AP, on the latest California recall election ("Voters to decide on lap dancing ban"): "The [Los Angeles] City Council must now decide whether to rescind [a recently enacted anti-lap dancing ordinance], place a referendum on the next citywide ballot in 2005 or add a question to the Democratic presidential primary in March. They have 20 days to decide what to do." (Emphasis added.)

That's What I Get For Pulling My Head Up For Five Minutes

I'd rather have remained oblivious to this news for just a little longer...