Law Commons^™

Government Movants For Anti-Slapp? Seriously? Seeking Needed Changes For Applying The California Anti-Slapp Law And The Government Speech Doctrine, Kevin R. Kemper

Kevin R Kemper

California courts have allowed governmental entities and employees to be movants under the anti-SLAPP law at California Civil Code of Procedure § 425.16. That means that those governmental entities and employees have been able to claim that government actions are protected acts of speech or petition under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The basic problem is that the First Amendment protects citizen speech and petition of citizens but not actions by government officials. This has been long established and recently affirmed in holdings by the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 2011, the Court in Nevada Commission on Ethics …

A Darwinian Approach: Interpreting An Operator's Obligations Under The A.A.P.L. Model Form Operating Agreement From And Evolutionary Perspective, Christopher A. Tumminia

Christopher A Tumminia

This paper examines the current interpretation of the A.A.P.L. Model Form Operating Agreement in comparison to its previous editions and proposes revised Articles V.A. and VII.A. to resolve issues of ambiguity.

Patent Litigation And The Internet, John R. Allison, Emerson H. Tiller, Samantha Zyontz

John R. Allison

Using both univariate comparisons and multiple regression techniques, we find that: (1) Internet patents and their two subtypes, broad Internet business models and narrower Internet business techniques, were litigated at a far higher rate than other (non-Internet patents, or NIPs)—they were between 7.5 and 9.5 times more likely to end up in infringement litigation, depending on the model we used. (2) Within the category of Internet patents, those on business models were litigated at a significantly higher rate than those on business techniques. (3) Across both Internet patents and NIPs, patents issued to small entities, especially individuals and small businesses, …

2 Standards 1 Cup: How Geotargeting Will End The Battle Between National And Local Obscenity Standards, Joseph Mason Kjar

J. Mason Kjar

The First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech—but that protection is not absolute. Some speech is banned outright, such as child pornography. Other speech is nearly fully protected, such as erotic speech. Caught in the middle of the two is obscene speech, which can be owned in the privacy of one’s home, but cannot be disseminated publicly.

The line between obscenity and eroticism is hard to pinpoint, and varies from community to community. In general, the process of analyzing whether a work is obscene includes asking whether the content violates the community standards of the local geographic area where …