UHLC Nota Bene

American libraries celebrated a legal victory last week in the Supreme Court’s disposition of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons .   The Court ruled that the appellant’s legal purchase of inexpensive books in Thailand and resale of the same books in the United States at a higher price, a form of arbitrage known as a parallel import , is protected   under the “first sale” doctrine : the principle that someone who purchases a single copy of a copyrighted work owns that one copy and may resell it or give it away without needing permission from the copyright holder. The libraries’ celebration may be premature.   Since 2010, the United States has been engaged in multilateral negotiations to form the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed free trade zone for Pacific Rim nations.   Among other things, the TPP proposes a new intellectual property regime that would effectively nullify the Kirtsaeng ruling by banning parallel imports and severely restricting the “...

On this day, in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was approved by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The National Constitution Center has a very interesting blog post that talks about this proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as three other proposed amendments that came (relatively) close to being ratified: The Titles of Nobility Amendment : Sometimes referred to as " the missing 13th Amendment ", this proposed amendment, originally approved by Congress in 1810 and technically still open for ratification ( ala the 27th Amendment), came the closest of any to being ratified without succeeding, at one point needing just one more state for ratification! The Child Labor Amendment : This proposed amendment, approved by Congress in 1924, would have explicitly given Congress the "power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age." The amendment was proposed in response to U.S. Supreme Court decisions ...

Recently, the state of Arkansas made headlines across the nation when they overrode a governor's veto to enact the tightest abortion restrictions in the country (at that time). Most of the news, deservedly so, focused on the content of the new act. What caught my eye, however, was how easy it was for the Arkansas legislature to override a veto: a mere simple majority of both houses is required! If that's all it takes, why even involve a governor in the process?! But Arkansas isn't alone. Five other states do not require at least three-fifths of each house to override a veto: Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. All of these require simply a majority of those elected in each house to override a veto. To be fair, although most states require at least three-fifths of legislators elected to override a veto, several states require two-thirds or three-fifths of the members present to do so, which, when coupled with a quorum requirement of a majority of ...

Though it is difficult to keep up with the over 3,000 bills filed in both the Texas House (987 bills) and Senate (2,369 bills) this legislative session, fans of craft beer and brewing should pay attention to Senate Bills 515, 516, 517, and 518. These bills propose to change Texas law governing the sale and distribution of craft beer in Texas. According to an economic impact study released by the Texas Craft Brewers Guild last year, small, independently owned craft breweries had a $608 million economic impact on the state in 2011 alone. Groups like the Texas Craft Brewers Guild are backing changes to Texas law that would allow small brewpubs and breweries to manufacture and distribute their product to consumers more direcetly. Here’s an overview of how the bills, if passed, would change the current law regulating Texas breweries and brewpubs, including Houston’s own popular Saint Arnold’s Brewing Company: Senate Bill 515 : This bill would increase the annual limit on a brewpub’s t...

Current 1L students, or anyone planning to take the Texas (or another state's) Bar Exam in 2015 or after ought to pay close attention in their Federal Civil Procedure courses. Beginning with the February 2105 exam, the Multistate Bar Exam will add Federal civil procedure to the list of subjects tested. Every jurisdiction, with the exception of Louisiana, uses the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) as part of their examination of attorney hopefuls. Currently, the MBE covers constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, evidence, real property, and torts. For the current 200 question test, 190 of the questions are scored, with 31 to 33 questions devoted to each subject. Test takers have three hours to complete the first 100 questions, and after a break, another three hours to answer the remaining one hundred questions. In Texas, the MBE is administered on the second day of the bar exam, with the first day devoted to the Multistate Performance Test, as well as the Texas Procedure and Eviden...

Information overload is real, but is only a problem because most people get too much information from the wrong sources. Getting information from the right sources is often half the battle.  If you are looking for smart and informative stories on current events and trends in the business world from a legal angle then try out the web site called Lexology .   Lexology is sponsored by the Association of Corporate Counsel and it provides articles written by practicing attorneys. These articles are usually posted on law firm’s web sites as marketing tools or simply to keep clients informed. The articles available on Lexology are targeted at business lawyers and cover a variety of issues. An article may focus on a recent case decision and a discussion of the implications of the court’s ruling.   Another article may highlight a new piece of legislation or a new rule and how each will be implemented and what steps affected parties (i.e. Clients) can take to comply with ...

My mother is 86 years old and she loves a good hamburger or a good grilled steak. Sadly, she will never know the taste of what is arguably the finest beef in the world, Kobe beef, without traveling to Japan. Regardless of what upscale restaurants say on their menus, there is no such thing as Kobe beef in the United States. It does not exist. It is illegal to import Kobe beef into the United States. The Kobe beef for sale here is not real Kobe beef; it’s beef, but it’s not the Kobe beef. Kobe beef only comes from a particular type of cow raised under very strict conditions in the Hyogo prefecture in Japan. It has been illegal in the U.S. to import any kind of beef from Japan since 2010 due to reports of Foot-and-Mouth disease. If you have had Kobe beef in the U.S. after 2010 then you have been a victim of fraud, but a completely legal fraud that is almost unique to the United States.  The term “Kobe beef” is trademarked and patented in Japan, and pretty much ev...