Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Congratulations to the 2014 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition Winners

Post author:Melissa Love Koenig
Post published:April 2, 2014
Post category:Legal Writing Marquette Law School Public

Congratulations to the winners of the 2014 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition, Jennifer McNamee and Elizabeth Oestreich. Congratulations also go to finalists Amy Heart and Frank Remington, as well as Brian Kane and Amanda Luedtke, who won the Franz C. Eschweiler Prize for Best Brief. Amy Heart won the Ramon A. Klitzke Prize for Best Oralist.

The competitors argued before a packed Appellate Courtroom. Presiding over the final round were Hon. Diurmuid O’Scannlain, Hon. Annette Ziegler, and Hon. Anne Burke.

Many thanks to the judges and competitors for their hard work, enthusiasm, and sportsmanship in all the rounds of competition, as well as to the moot court executive board and Law School administration and staff for their work in putting on the event. Special thanks to Dean Kearney for his support of the competition.

Students are selected to participate in the competition based on their success in the fall Appellate Writing and Advocacy class at the Law School. Here is a link to the video of the competition.

Google Files Cert. Petition in Street View Case

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:April 1, 2014
Post category:Computer Law Privacy Rights Public

Google Street View Car I noted back in October that Google had hired “noted Supreme Court advocate Seth Waxman” as it was preparing its petition for rehearing in the Street View case, “indicating perhaps how far they intend to take this.” (For background, see my earlier posts Part I, Part II, after the panel decision, and on the petition for rehearing.) My suspicions were accurate — after losing again at the rehearing stage in late December, Google has now filed a petition for certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit.

Google’s petition primarily makes the same substantive arguments it made in its petition for rehearing. The Ninth Circuit in the decision below adopted what I’ve called the “radio means radio” approach — “radio communications” in the Wiretap Act means only communications that you can receive with, you know, an ordinary AM/FM radio. I’ve argued that that is mistaken, and Google unsurprisingly agrees with me. Google provides three reasons why the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation cannot be sustained.

Disney and Phase 4 Films Settle Lawsuit over Frozen Logo

Post author:Danielle Nardick
Post published:March 31, 2014
Post category:Intellectual Property Law Popular Culture & Law Public

Earlier this year, Disney and Phase 4 Films settled a lawsuit over Phase 4’s attempts to capitalize on Disney’s latest animated success, Frozen. Phase 4’s film was originally titled The Legend of Sarila. According to the complaint filed by Disney, it was released November 1, 2013, a few weeks before Frozen’s release, to dismal box office revenues. Phase 4 then changed the film’s name to Frozen Land, and redesigned the film’s logo to mimic that of Disney’s Frozen. For a side-by-side look at the logos, see the complaint filed by Disney here.

In the settlement, Phase 4 agreed to immediately stop marketing and distributing its film under the name Frozen Land, and pay Disney $100,000. At first I was skeptical of Disney’s claim, but after comparing the separate logos, it seems highly unlikely that this was anything but a blatant attempt to profit off of Frozen‘s success. The logos contain the same color scheme, the same shape, and almost identical fonts.

As far as the Lanham Act violation claim, it seems almost certain that consumers would be confused as to the relation between the two movies, perhaps reasonably assuming that Frozen Land is a spin-off of Frozen. They also settled an unfair competition claim that was based on Disney’s claims that Phase 4’s Frozen Land caused irreparable damage to Disney’s goodwill and reputation.