It is tradition for the University of Massachusetts-Lowell’s student-run newspaper, The Connector, to publish a year-end spoof issue.  Appropriately dubbed The DisConnector, the edition is a chance for the newspaper staff to provoke discussion while blowing off steam by using satire and other forms of humor to poke fun at items seen or heard around campus throughout the past year.  This year’s installment, however, containing numerous profanities and derogatory language, has been lambasted as being overly crude to the point of disrespecting and offending entire groups of people including homosexuals, immigrants, racial minorities, and women.

Notably, The Connector is just the latest in a string of student newspapers to receive intense censure in the past few months for content appearing in satirical editions.  The papers at Rutgers University, Boston University, and the University of Missouri have each been criticized for editorial decisions related to April Fools’ issues.

In most instances, the First Amendment provides broad protection and limits the action a public institution may take against an independently run student newspaper.  Indeed, the administration at UMass-Lowell, while condemning The Connector’s most recent exercise of editorial judgment (or lack thereof), recognizes and places high value on the freedoms of speech and of the press and, as such, has no future plans to censor the publication.  But even as the First Amendment safeguards against government censorship, threat of lawsuits brought by private individuals—for defamation, emotional distress, or intrusion into one’s privacy, for example—may still give pause to student newspapers as they push the limits of indecency in the name of a laugh.

Having previously worked with the Student Press Law Center, I wished to delve further into the details of actions taken either against schools for their expurgatorial efforts or against the student publications themselves.  I was particularly interested in any information regarding settlements or jury verdicts.  I crafted the following simple search using WestlawNext:

Search:  school newspaper spoofs

Jurisdiction: All State & Federal

From Filters, Search within results in Cases: TO(school university college student /p news****** paper publication publish journal! press)

From Filters, Search within results in Jury Verdicts and Settlement Summaries: (school university college student /p news****** paper publication publish journal! press)

Most interesting to me were the creative ways in which some settlements were reached.  In addition to the usual damages and attorneys’ fees, one newspaper agreed to run ads for free (2008 WL 6691482), another school promised to increase its funding for the student publication (2008 WL 6691482), and one settlement mandated donations to non-profit journalism organizations (2003 WL 23529612).  In order to organize my research and ensure easy access to these documents in the future, I went ahead and added them to my personal research folder.

For additional news articles detailing public outcry over newspaper spoofs, run the same original search I ran above in the News content page on WestlawNext.

Tips for Summer Associates from law schools are commonplace.  Earlier, we referenced NYU’s memo.  Citing the New York Law Journal, the University of Connecticut reminds summers to be social, but not too social.  Last year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison noted that “legal research in a business setting may seem very different compared to your academic experience.” True enough.  So, we asked a few large law librarians for their input.  Here’s what they had to say:

Use the firm’s Library Take advantage of your firm librarians’ knowledge. Put the librarian on your ‘resource-to-check list.’ Visit your library often and learn how to use its resources . . . both ‘E’ and hard copy.  Work with the Librarians and Reference Attorneys to setup search parameters.

Bill Carefully Make sure you assign the correct client ID for any research you perform.  It cannot be changed. Also, your law firm password is not the same as your law school access. Any research you perform will be billed to a client.   Plan your research accordingly and, always bill your time.

Research Carefully  Attend training sessions offered by the firm.  Take WL/WLN e-learning classes to refresh and/or perfect your research skills. Ask questions when you receive a research assignment, so that you are as clear as possible as to what the attorney would like you to find. Deliver your work in a timely manner. It is your professional and ethical responsibility to learn the tools of you chosen profession.  Most of all, ask questions before starting a project!

Work Hard: Capitalize on all opportunities given to you during the summer. Ask questions. Demonstrate a willingness to learn. Work for as many attorneys as possible. Earn the respect of others by being respectful to those around you.

 Special thanks to Susan Harlow,  Peggy Martin, and Account Managers  for their contributions to this post.

These days, tips for summer associates come in many forms. This NYU Memo is a gem – hat tip Constitutional Daily. Throughout the summer, Westlaw Reference Attorneys will be serving summer associates in our own way — in any way we can. Be it over the phone (1-800-REF-ATTY), on this Blog, on Twitter (@WestlawRefAtty), or on Facebook. To start off, we collected nuggets of summer associate wisdom from former summer associates (now Westlaw Reference Attorneys).  Here are 5 tips from Westlaw Reference Attorneys who worked at Dorsey & Whitney; one in the summer of 2005, the other in 2007.

1. Learn the name of each attorney at the firm that is involved in the summer associate program.  Usually there is a committee at the firm.  Take advantage of every opportunity you have to meet and speak with them, as they often are the ones making the final hiring decisions.

2. Everyone is just as stressed as you are.

3. Being a summer associate is all about building relationships in your prospective firm.  Make it a priority to attend as many summer associate events as possible.  Not only will it signal to the recruiting attorneys that you are interested in and enthusiastic about the firm, but it also gives you a chance to meet many of the firm’s attorneys which could inform your decision as to which practice area of the firm to join.

4. Always have a positive, supportive attitude in interacting with fellow summer associates, even if you are competing with them for a limited number of job offers.  You will not make a positive impression on the firm if you are unsupportive or, worse, undermine your co-workers.

5. If you make a mistake, admit it honestly to the appropriate attorney.  No attorney is perfect, and it’s very likely that the consequences of having made a mistake will be much less serious than those of an attempt to hide a mistake.

Under 17 U.S.C.A. Section 105, copyright is unavailable for works of the U.S.  government or its employees. Jill’s excellent post last week highlighted the fact that state agencies and the states themselves don’t necessarily share the policy.  Instead state ” [l]egislatures may also be tempted to impose statutory restrictions on information in order to raise revenues from new sources or to accomplish other purposes,” notes Robert Gellman in a 1995 Syracuse Law Review. 45 SYRLR 999.

Could it be enough to defray the cost of the Diamond Jubilee? Hard to say.

Copyright for government works in the the UK and in several  members of her Commowealth, vests in Her Majesty the Queen under what’s called,  Crown Copyright.  See, for example,  R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42, s. 12 and McKeown: Fox on Canadian Law of Copyright and Industrial Designs (FoxCopyright 18).

This 2005 article from the International Journal of Law and Technology by Dr. Stephen Saxby cites to a 1995 Green Paper (pdf) which calculated 95-96 revenue came to £199,318,500.  The Telegraph estimates much more than that for the Jubilee.

This is also interesting because the United States is a signatory to the Berne Convention.  Signatories must extend the same protection to foreign material that they would extend had the same work been created domestically (this summary elides a great deal of detail and nuance).  This raises the specter that a country which extends copyright protection to its own government works would have to similarly extend protection to American government works, even though the U.S. government extends no protection domestically.  For a discussion of that scenario, see footnote 49 in 48 STJIL 185.

Other Research References

To see the British law on Crown Copyrights, try the search crown /2 copyright in UK-ST. I found 32 results.

The Berne Convention on Westlaw.  The relevant database is IEL (International Economic Law Documents) and the relevant search is ti(“berne convention”), and the results show both the original agreement and subsequent amendments.

Finally, 2002 SYLTJ 1 gives a brief description how easy it would be to register an American government document with the Canadian Copyright office.

A few weeks ago, while listening to public radio’s “On the Media” program, I heard an interesting interview with Carl Malamud, of Public.Resource.Org. Mr. Malamud was discussing public standards created by private or industry organizations that have been incorporated by reference into the Code of Federal Regulations and other administrative codes. The conversation focused on the general unavailability of these standards to the public, and how you often must purchase the standards from the entity who drafted the particular standards, which can get expensive. Mr. Malamud’s argument is that if language is incorporated by reference into the administrative code, and enforceable as law, it should be publicly available, as it is no longer private property.

Mr. Malamud mentioned the 2002 Veeck case (49 F.Supp.2d 885), where a Texas web-developer purchased the Model Building Code (incorporated by reference into the Texas Building Code) and placed it online. That case went up to the 5th Circuit.  See 293 F.3d 791. The 5th Circuit found that while the Model Building Code might have had copyright protection as a Model Code,  it was no longer copyrightable once it was incorporated into the Texas Code.  This decision was specific to the Texas Building Code situation though, and does not necessarily extend to law incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations. The Veeck decision has seen some serious criticism.  William Patry calls the decision “deeply flawed” and concludes:

But, a fair number of Veeck’s 283 citing references continue to cite ‘broad policy considerations’ as reason for why standards should fall outside the copyright protection.  See for example, Pamula Samuelson’s,  Questioning Copyrights in Standards, 48 B.C. L. Rev. 193. 

Mr. Malamud’s organization has purchased a number of copyrighted standards that he intends to publish online to force the issue in regards to the CFR. PublicResource’s CodeCity is here.

ADDITIONAL RESEARCH REFERENCES

WestlawNext search in secondary sources:

veeck & private or industry standards incorporated by reference into regulation

Relevant results inlcude:

Lawrence A. Cunningham, Private Standards in Public Law: Copyright, Lawmaking and the Case of Accounting, 104 Mich. L. Rev. 291 (2005)

Katie M. Colendich, Who Owns “The Law”? The Effect on Copyrights When Privately-Authored Works Are Adopted or Enacted by Reference into Law, 78 Wash. L. Rev. 589 (2003)

Shubha Ghosh, Copyright as Privatization: The Case of Model Codes, 78 Tul. L. Rev. 653 (2004)

One of my clearest memories from the week of on-campus interviews at the beginning of my 2L-year was a question many students were asking;  “what does it mean that Dewey Ballantine is merging with LeBoeuf & Lamb? “  Both firms distributed documents to dispel rumors.  In essence, they read,   “don’t worry, we’re still hiring the same number of Summer Associates.” I’ve been thinking about this as I read that Dewey & LeBoeuf has negotiated an extension on its current debt, giving it time to get its house in order.

The Economist covered Dewey’s troubles last week (article also available at 2012 WLNR 8835899).  That article discusses why it can be difficult for professional partnership businesses (such as law firms) to escape downward debt spiral, because the firm can’t meet obligations by liquidating assets (a professional corporation’s only real assets are the professionals), and can’t resort to the market for funding, as a public company would.

The comparison of law firms and public companies is a fascinating one, especially this year.  In January, a public company, Quindell Portfolio, filed for a license to purchase British personal injury firm Silverbeck Rymer.  This moment has been anticipated for some time, after Britain’s Legal Services Act of 2007, which, among a series of other reforms, allowed law firms to be owned in part by non-lawyers.  See UK ST 2007 c. 29 Pt 5 s. 71 et seq (Research Note: run the bolded portion of this citation as a find to deliver the document on Westlaw.  The “Arrangement of Act” link delivers the Act’s table of contents.).    Approval of the sale by the relevant regulatory agencies is still pending.

In the United States, only the District of Columbia allows any profits from the practice of law to flow to non-lawyers (see D.C. Rule of Professional Conduct 5.4(b)).  In recent years, though, there has been increasing discussion of changing the rules to allow for greater non-lawyer participation in firm ownership and governance, including in the halls of the American Bar Association.  See 22 No. 1 Experience 5.  For more material on these debates, try the following search from the Secondary Sources page on WestlawNext:

Search: alternative /3 law legal /3 practice firm business /3 structure organization

Result: 45 Documents

Filters: You can use the filters on the left to look specificially at law review articles or CLE materials (i.e. ALI-ABA and PLI).

Almost half of the results are from the past 5 years, which suggests increased interest in a change from the partnership model.  One day, Dewey & LeBoeuf may be remembered as one of the last firms to face down a debt crisis without the ability to look to the public for aid.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-191, is a piece of legislation that many of us have had to deal with.  It is codified beginning at 29 USCA 1181, with important regulations starting at 45 CFR 106.101 and continuing through much of the rest of that title.  It raises a lot of questions for medical providers (and a few questions for entities seemingly disconnected from the medical trade), but one of the most fascinating questions for me has always been: why do some people abbreviate it with two Ps?

A search in Allcases for H.I.P.A.A. (the periods are rarely used, but you would miss a few cases if you didn’t include them) finds 1773 results.  But a similar search for H.I.P.P.A. finds 599 results, despite the fact that there is only a single P in the name of the act.  Perhaps some of these are mere typos, but if you run H.I.P.P.A. % H.I.P.A.A., there are still 393 cases using only the mistaken acronym, with no mention of the original (some of these, it bears mentioning, are older, pre-HIPAA cases with a party name that appears similar, but a quick look at the result list shows that not all of the errors are of that sort).  I even tracked down 98 cases that use different acronyms within a paragraph of one another (H.I.P.A.A. /p H.I.P.P.A.).*

The earliest** case using the second P is Wright v. Combined Ins. Co. of America, 959 F.Supp. 356, from February 3, 1997.  Note, however, that WestlawNext seems to know what we’re looking for.  The following query pulled from Wright higlights “HIPPA” as well as “HIPAA.”

In HIPPA, the undersigned cannot find any “manifest congressional intent” to create a new federal cause of action which is removable to federal court….delivers the following results

There is at least one earlier misspelling, from a 1996 article in the Health Lawyer (available at 9 No. 3. Health Law. 16).

The mistaken acronym is sometimes even expanded into a full mistaken name for the act with the different “Ps” standing for some mix of ‘privacy,’ ‘protection’ and ‘portability.’  A locate within the earlier H.I.P.P.A. results for “health /s information /s privacy portability /s protection” yields 26 results.  Of those, one, the opinion in Boese v. Slaughter, 2007 WL 1071924, bears mention, as it goes out of its way to tell the reader HIPPA is, to quote Magistrate Judge Strong, an ‘inaccurate acronym.’

*A few cases even refer to H.I.P.P.A.A.

**This is easily determined by running H.I.P.P.A. with a shifting date restrictor, which just means using a date restrictor and moving the relevant date a few years at a time until you get a manageable result list. H.I.P.P.A. finds 596 in allcases, but adding da(bef 2000) finds only 34, and changing it to 1998 takes that down to 31, most of which are pre-HIPAA references to someone with the last name ‘Hipp.’

Earlier this week, I read a very interesting story about Nokia’s  patent application for tattoos inserted under the skin that alerts a user when their cell phone rings, or has a new message or text or if their battery is low.  US PAT APP 20120062371, HAPTIC COMMUNICATION.  The abstract section of the patent application states,

“In accordance with an example embodiment of the present invention, an apparatus comprises: a material attachable to skin, the material capable of detecting a magnetic field and transferring a perceivable stimulus to the skin, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to the magnetic field.”

Remarkably, “cyborg” appears less frequently in the case law (54 times) than  “ferromagnetic”   (83 times) – as in “ferromagnetic tattoo ink”.

RESEARCH REFERENCES

Westlaw Database: US Patent Applications (US-PAT-APP)

Query: DA(3/2012) & NOKIA & TATTOO

Sample Prior Art Approach:

The US Class code is 340/407.1 (Tactual indication).  The IPC is G08 6/00 (Tactile signalling systems). Using Stedman’s Medical Dictionary (STEDMANS), we found alternative terms for skin (query: ti(skin)): epidermis and corium (dermis). SYN: cutis.

Westlaw Database: US Utility Patents (US-UTIL)

Query: 340/407.1 G08-6/00 & TI,AB(TATTOO SKIN EPIDERMIS CORIUM DERMIS CUTIS)

KeyCite

I am monitoring this patent application with a KeyCite Alert. Once you pull up the patent application, you can set up a KeyCite Alert by clicking on the link on the left side “Monitor with KeyCite Alert” and the set up wizard will take you through the steps to set it up.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing by George Zimmerman on February 26th, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law has come under intense scrutiny. The law, passed by Florida legislators in 2005, allows people to employ deadly force in cases of self-defense where they believe their lives are at risk. (2005 Fla. Sess. Law Serv. Ch. 2005-27) The law’s original Senate sponsor, Durrell Peaden, stated it was crafted after an elderly man from Pensacola shot an intruder who tried to loot his hurricane-ravaged home. George Zimmerman now seeks protection under “Stand Your Ground” by claiming that he feared for his life and that his actions were made in self-defense.

While the facts remain in question, a few observers have opined that “Stand Your Ground” is inapplicable in the Trayvon Martin shooting as George Zimmerman is believed to have followed and later confronted the teenage victim. If correct, Zimmerman may have to rely on common-law self-defense. This will likely raise the question of whether use of deadly force was justifiable under the circumstances. According to Robbins v. State, “A person is justified in using deadly force in self-defense if he or she reasonably believes such force is necessary to protect one’s self from imminent death or great bodily harm; the circumstances must be such that the defendant had cause to think loss of life or serious injury is imminent.” (891 So.2d 1102)

The primary difference between common-law self-defense and “Stand Your Ground” is the matter of retreat. While “Stand Your Ground” abolished the duty to retreat, common-law self-defense requires one–outside of the home or curtilage–to retreat if possible, and if doing so will avoid the need to use deadly force. (Falco v. State, 407 So. 2d 203)

RESEARCH REFERENCES

Database/Content Category: Florida Hist. Legislative Service (FL-LEGIS-OLD)
Search:  “deadly force” & da(2005) (1 doc)

Database/Content Category: Florida Cases (FL-CS)
Search: SY,DI(“SELF-DEFENSE” /S “DEADLY FORCE” /S JUSTIF!) % (“NON-DEADLY FORCE” /S “SELF DEFENSE” “NOT JUSTIF!”) (22 Docs)
Search: self-defense /s common-law (18 Docs)

Database: BLACKS

Search: curitilage

curtilage (k<<schwa>>r-t<<schwa>>-lij). (14c) The land or yard adjoining a house, usu. within an enclosure. • Under the Fourth Amendment, the curtilage is an area usu. protected from warrantless searches. — Also termed (in Latin) curtillium. See open-fields doctrine. Cf. messuage. [Cases: Searches and Seizures27.]

There has been a lot in the news lately about employers asking potential employees for Facebook or other social networking site passwords during the interview process.  A search of Westlaw’s ALLNEWS database shows over 250 results in the last 30 days for the following query:

facebook /s employ! /s potential applicant & da(last 30 days)

Facebook itself has jumped into the fray, warning potential employers not to ask a potential employee for his or her password, and several U.S. Senators are pushing for a Department of Justice investigation into the practice.  See 2012 WLNR 6534354.

Questions about this employment practice have been coming from a number of sources, and both sides of the political spectrum.  There has also been a spate of newly introduced legislation in response to this practice, with more states introducing legislation seemingly daily.  Minnesota is among the most recent, with a bill in the Minnesota Senate, 2011 MN S.F. 2565 (NS), and it’s companion bill in the Minnesota House, 2011 MN H.F. 2963 (NS).

Minnesota joins California (2011 CA A.B. 1844 (NS)), Maryland (2012 MD S.B. 433 (NS)), and Illinois (2011 IL H.B. 3782 (NS)) in considering legislation to prohibit this practice.  It seems likely more states will follow.

To stay up to speed on the status of these bills, or when new bills are filed in any state, you can set up a WestClip in the BILLTXT database using the following query:

employer /p username password (social +1 network! media) facebook e-mail

To watch for federal legislation on this topic, you can run the same query in CONG-BILLTXT.

It seems certain that the debate on this issue will continue and grow going forward, so it will be very interesting to watch the legislative developments and the number of states that consider bills to address this yet this session.