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The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a district court ruling in which a creditor of John Zuccarini successfully levied execution against a domain name held in Mr  Zuccarini’s name.

Mr Zuccarini, sometimes known as Cupcake Patrol and other “colourful” noms de plume, may be familiar to those of you around in the “old” days of the UDRP from the frequency in which he appeared as a respondent.

Venkat, in a guest post on Professor Goldman’s Technology and Marketing blog, highlights, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling permitted execution on the basis of the location of the domain name registrar. So, if your client has registered his/her/its domain name through a US registrar, the domain name could be at risk if your client becomes embroiled in a dispute with someone who has access to the US legal system.

Michael Geist has a link to the leaked EU comments on the chapter for third party liability on the internet – being drafted by the USA.

The Guardian has weighed into the debate.

Kim Weatherall has emerged from her self-imposed seclusion to comment here, here and here.

DFAT’s must recent summary and overview of key elements. Anondyne USTR statement.

Patently-O has extracts from and links to transcripts of the oral argument before the US Supreme Court and some informed reportage.

Also, make sure you read Prof. John Duffy’s rebuttal of the charge that the Federal Circuit’s decision in State Street “opening the floodgates” to business method patents is a case of judicial activisim gone wild.

Then ask yourself, would the world really be a better place if we all adopted the European practice of banning the patenting of  business methods and computer programs “as such“?

IP What’s Up (USA) reviews a book demystifying software licensing (from a US perspective).

OUP’s link.

Plagiarism Today’s list of top 5 DMCA mistakes (and some things to do to avoid them).

A committee comprised of judges and attorneys has published the National Patent Jury Instructions.

As its name suggests, a set of model instructions for juries in the USA for patent actions.

Apart from when your client might be litigating in lawyer paradise, you never know, you might find some useful ideas – bearing in mind that their law and our law are not exactly the same!

Download from here. Lid dip Patently-O.

In case your newsfeed hasn’t beeped you, the jury in Minnesota has awarded the record companies US$1,920,000 against Jammie Thomas for her 24 infringing downloads.

That’s right, $80,000 per infringement.

The original award, which the judge quashed “sua sponte“, was “only” $220,000. Presumably, there are going to be some interesting motions “non obstante veredicto“?

Evan Brown has some links. The Age (lid dip Matt Bromley).

Howard predicts (hopes?) this is the end for record companies.

Yesterday (in the USA) Google’s new trade mark policy and complaint procedure came into force.

All the details here.

Australia is still in the regions where both text and keywords are monitored.

Lid dip @TrademarkBlog (aka Marty Schwimmer)

The dispute resolution panel’s decision in the USA’s complaint against China’s rules on enforcement, “Measures affecting the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights” (DS362) (background here) has been published.

There’s a range of commentary around the web.  The  IPKat reproduces the conclusions and, applying sophistaKatted Euro reading between the lines, scores it at 3-all.

Intellectual Property Watch’s summary here.  According to the USTR, the US won.

Not sure what has happened to the “market access” dispute?

In Australia (since the famous McCabe v BAT case (overturned on appeal), of course, we know them as “document retention” policies.

In the US, a Federal District Court judge has ruled that Rambus cannot enforce a patent relating to DRAM technology as a result of its policy, implemented in 1998, of destroying documents where the court held Rambus should have known litigation was likely.

A different judge, in the District of Northern California, apparently took the opposite view.

An appeal has been foreshadowed.

Read further here.

Lid dip: Peter Clarke.