How Appealing



Wednesday, October 21, 2015

“Amazon.com escapes trademark suit after appeals court reverses itself”: Reuters has this report.

And at Techdirt, Timothy Geigner has a post titled “Appeals Court Reverses Its Own Ruling: It’s NOT Trademark Infringement For Amazon To Provide Useful Search Results.”

You can access today’s ruling of a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on panel rehearing at this link.

My earlier coverage of the divided three-judge panel’s original ruling, in which the majority reached the opposite result, can be accessed here and here.

In my first post about the earlier ruling, I observed that “[b]ecause a Senior U.S. District Judge sitting by designation provided the decisive vote on the panel, this case may have a better than average chance of attaining rehearing en banc.”

My observation seems at least equally if not more apt now, given that the visiting senior district judge’s change of mind about the proper outcome of the case is the reason for today’s revised ruling on panel rehearing that reaches the exact opposite result of the three-judge panel’s initial 2-to-1 ruling.

Posted at 5:55 PM by Howard Bashman



“Supreme Court takes 1st patent case of term, and plaintiffs could benefit; Halo Electronics won its patent case, but it’s frustrated with a $1.5M award”: Joe Mullin of Ars Technica has this report.

Posted at 5:46 PM by Howard Bashman



“Scalia Is Wrong About Kansas: His speculation that voters would oust judges who ‘don’t like the death penalty’ was dead wrong.” Robert J. Smith has this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.

Posted at 5:26 PM by Howard Bashman



“On Gun Laws, We Must Get the History Right: Understanding who carried weapons in the 17th century could determine where you may carry a gun today.” Priya Satia has this jurisprudence essay online today at Slate.

Posted at 5:23 PM by Howard Bashman



“Dissenting statement from denial of review — first ever?” Yesterday at the “At the Lectern” blog, David Ettinger had a post that begins, “When the Supreme Court [of California] last week denied review in In re Joseph H., it made news because it’s a high-profile case (a 10-year-old shot and killed his neo-Nazi father) and it involves an important legal issue (whether a 10-year-old can knowingly waive his Miranda rights).”

Posted at 5:18 PM by Howard Bashman