Good luck with that.

From The Register:

Residents on the Greek island of Lesbos have declared that they alone have the right to call themselves lesbians, and yesterday launched a legal action against the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union (Olke) designed to wrest back control of the word from aficionados of Sapphic luuurv.

Local activist Dimitris Lambrou states in his complaint that the "seizure" of the island's name is responsible for the "psychological and moral rape" of true lesbians, and reckons the case will come before an Athens court in June.

Olke spokesperson Evangelia Vlam counterattacked with: "This affair is totally ridiculous. But if we are summoned by the courts, we will be heard."

UPDATE: Professor Eugene Volokh notes that he anticipated this claim in an off-the-cuff hypothetical he offered last year at The Volokh Consporacy.

Over at the Opinio Juris blog, Professor Roger Alford notes that "rules regarding geographic appellation are extremely important in the international trade context. Such rules resolve questions like what glass of bubbly can be called 'Champagne' and what mustard merits the label 'Dijon'? But I'm not aware of a similar claim that rules on geographic appellation can be used to prevent a social or political group from usurping the label."

This lawsuit has already garnered a surprising amount of attention around the legal blogosphere; if we follow Professor Volokh's suggestion and start referring to it as the "Lesbian-on-Lesbian Action", this could become the most-followed case in recent blawgosphere history.

If God insists on resting on the seventh day, He's never going to break Ripken's record.

The With Leather sports blog offers a bit of insight into the increasingly-strange trademark dust-up between Little League Baseball and the upstart Christian Little League. Confronted by Little League's lawsuit, With Leather reports that the founder of Christian Little League, Jay Kaplan

responded the only way a righteous Christian jackass knows how: by being a righteous Christian jackass.

"GOD is the ultimate judge and has the final say," he wrote in a March 15 letter to Little League's lawyers. Before filing suit Thursday, the organization's lawyers contacted Kaplan in a March 7 letter demanding that he stop using the Little League tag. The similar names could mislead and confuse the public by suggesting an affiliation between the groups, the lawyers wrote...

"Christian Little League was GOD's idea and it is a great and wonderful idea," wrote Kaplan, who grew up Jewish and converted to Christianity. "I have no plans on changing the name GOD gave me." [...] "My position is Little League should embrace the name of Jesus. Let's start with that."

From what I've read of this case, Little League's position looks like the stronger one, notwithstanding Kaplan's compelling arguments. Still, if God really has directed the formation and naming of this allegedly-infringing league, I don't envy the attorney who has to take the Big Guy's deposition.

I hear that the third time's the charm, although the first two were already pretty charming.

Professor Eric Goldman is pulling together another gathering of the legal bloggers here in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. I've been fortunate enough to have made it to the first two and I've already calendared this third meet-up. My favorite part of these events is the opportunity to meet people with whom I've corresponded for the last few years; making virtual friends into real ones is one of the treats of our digital age.

Deep Thoughts

Michael Fitzgibbon is one of my favorite legal bloggers; his blog, Thoughts from a Management Lawyer is a great, consistently informative, no gimmicks legal site. This week, he's hosting Blawg Review #157. Highlights of this labor and employment law-centric edition include a few dos and don'ts -- micromanaging employee expenditures (do), waterboarding your employees (don't), conducting a proper workplace investigation (do), and bringing your baby to the workplace (don't -- at least in Britain). This last highlight might be an issue to revisit next week, when The Mommy Blawg hosts #158.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (164)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, April 23; link good at time of posting):

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs.

. . . .

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

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Random Thought (10)

I blog under my real name because I don't want people to know my pseudonym.

[Previous Thought]

Why turn a blind eye when you can turn an all-seeing one?

It's not difficult to join the crowd in criticizing Microsoft for their product, security, and strategic choices. The company's done a lot right, though, and it's a genuine pleasure to recognize that Microsoft can not just display a leadership mentality from time-to-time, but also bring to bear the resources necessary to lead; I congratulate them for leading on security issues at the ToorCon security conference in Seattle recently. The Register reports:

In a first for a major company, Microsoft has publicly pledged not to sue or press charges against ethical hackers who responsibly find security flaws in its online services.

The promise, extended Saturday at the ToorCon security conference in Seattle, is a bold and significant move. While researchers are generally free to attack legally acquired software running on their own hardware, they can face severe penalties for probing websites that run on servers belonging to others. In some cases, organizations have pursued legal action against researchers who did nothing more than discover and responsibly report serious online vulnerabilities.

"This is actually really important because online services - that's our stuff," Microsoft security strategist Katie Moussouris told several hundred researchers. "The philosophy here is if someone is being nice enough to point out your fly is down, they're really doing you a favor and you should thank them rather than calling the cops and saying you're a pervert."

Moussouris said she is pushing to get a provision added to a proposed standard that's making its way through the International Organization for Standardization that would protect ethical hackers who responsibly disclose vulnerabilities in other companies' websites. "If I get my way, it'll be in there," she said.

. . . .

The idea is to make websites safer by taking advantage of the legions of independent researchers who stumble upon security bugs. As she put it: "Don't hate the finder, hate the vulnerability. We don't actually want to discourage people who are trying to help us by being iffy about whether we're going to go after them."

. . . .

"There's definitely a lot of trepidation among legitimate researchers to find flaws in public-facing web applications because you never know how [companies] are going to react," said Alex Stamos, a founding partner at iSEC Partners, a firm that provides penetration-testing services. "That hurts us because the only people finding these flaws are the bad guys."

Kickin' Back, Keepin' It Virtual

One of the more focused and interesting legal blogs around is Benjamin Duranske's Virtually Blind. For those of you who've not yet found this ongoing discussion of the legal issues associated with the virtual world (e.g., Second Life, World of Warcraft), this week's Blawg Review #156 offers a great opportunity to get a real education about all things virtual. Highlights in this week's edition include intellectual property infringement in the virtual world, Apple's efforts to stake out its legal territory online, ethical negotiation in the real world, and what's possibly the end of the world if you're on death row -- a roundup of commentary on the Supreme Court's Baze decision. Next week, Michael Fitzgibbon does the heavy thinking -- really rather than virtually this time around -- at his Thoughts from a Management Lawyer blog.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (163)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of KITV (via Quizlaw) (from Monday, April 14; link good at time of posting):

The Honolulu Police Department asked for the public's help in Monday in tracking down a man who tried to rob a bank.

. . . .

A man walked up to a teller with a note demanding money, then past [sic] a second note for a withdrawal.

"The note says 'This is a robbery.' She takes a little while. What he does is he gets another note, and this time it's a withdrawal slip for a certain amount of money. She asks for him for ID. He gets flustered, and he flees," Sgt. Kim Buffett said.

[Previous TGIS]

It's not a bird or a plane... it's a "superhero lawyer-turned-CEO"

Andrew Feinberg at the Capitol Valley blog has more of the wonderful response of Blue Jeans Cable's CEO to bullying competitor Monster Cable, which I posted about yesterday. That letter should be required reading in every law school. Tremendous. Thanks to Blawg Review's anonymous Editor for pointing this post out to me.

"Cease and Desist" is Legalese for "Please, Make Me Look Like an Ass"

Via Slashdot:

[Monster Cable] sent a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cable over a supposed patent violation. What the Monster folks couldn't have known was that Blue Jeans president Kurt Denke used to be a lawyer. His response is as humorous as it is thorough. "Let me begin by stating, without equivocation, that I have no interest whatsoever in infringing upon any intellectual property belonging to Monster Cable. Indeed, the less my customers think my products resemble Monster's, in form or in function, the better... If there is more than one such connector design in actual use by Monster Cable as to which appropriation of trade dress is alleged, of course, I will require this information for each and every such design. On the basis of what I have seen, both in the USPTO documents you have sent and the actual appearance of Monster Cable connectors which I have observed in use in commerce, it does not appear to me that Monster Cable is in a position to advance a nonfrivolous claim for infringement of these marks."

I have no use for them right now, but I'm going to stop on my way home and load up on Blue Jeans cables.

Well played, sir. Well played, indeed.

[Update]

An Ode to Blawg Review #155

Comes now a Blawg Review host
To whom I'll offer this toast:
He's gathered great links,
But his poetry stinks.
We're waiting for Giacalone's post.

Greg May hosts Blawg Review #155 at The California Blog of Appeal. From legal-themed poetry to the stress it causes, May has things ably covered this week. Benjamin Duranske will host next week's carnival of legal blogging at his Virtually Blind blog.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (162)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Techdirt (from Wednesday, April 9; link good at time of posting):

It appears Marilyn Monroe's estate didn't think all the way through its strategy of posthumously moving the famed star to New York. Apparently, her family convinced California tax authorities that Monroe had been a New York resident, in an attempt to avoid paying taxes on the estate in California. Unfortunately for the estate, that would also mean that Marilyn Monroe's publicity rights died with her.

. . . . California allows "rights of publicity" to live on after death -- meaning that images of famous people still need to be licensed. However, New York says your right of publicity dies when you die. So, a court has now ruled that, thanks to Monroe's own estate claiming that she was a New Yorker, there's no longer a right of publicity for Monroe, and photographers who own Monroe photographs shouldn't have to pay her estate (as they've done since her death). This has photographers claiming that the estate has been unfairly demanding licenses for many years. Next time, perhaps Monroe's estate will just pay the taxes it owes.

[Previous TGIS]

Mac gives lawyers the best of both Words.

Fellow attorney and Mac enthusiast David Sparks has taken a look at the Word for Mac 2008 and found it to be a vast improvement -- with room for further improvement -- over its 2004 predecessor:

I have not always been kind to Microsoft Word on the Mac. Put simply, Office 2004, was a slug on intel Macs. It was slow to load, slow to type, and clunky. It was also a resource hog since its not inconsiderable code had to be ground through Rosetta [a built-in OS utility which enables Intel-based Macs to run PowerPC-based Mac programs]. I simply found it easier to use other applications.

It has occurred to me recently that this has changed. I’ve been using Office 2008 for a few months and have found it serves an important role in my day job once again. A lot of the work I do is collaborative. I write agreements and contracts all the time and, sadly, I can count the number of Macs on the other end of that process on one hand. So it is a given that I’m dealing with Microsoft Word on the other side of the table just about every time.

Word 2008 cures a lot of its predecessor’s sins. It loads pretty snappy and doesn’t get in your way when typing. I think the Microsoft Mac:BU [the Macintosh development group within Microsoft] has also made some significant strides in making it feel . . . well . . . more Mac-like. I met several of the Office developers at Macworld and a lot of those guys really “get it” with the Mac experience. For me, it was real eye opening. Microsoft Word is legendary for having every imaginable feature. The Microsoft Mac engineers had to retain all of that stuff and still make a pleasant to use Mac application. That is not exactly easy. Nevertheless, they did a good job of containing it all.

I can second what David says. I run Office for Mac 2004 at home (on an Intel-based iMac) and Office for Mac 2008 at work (on an Intel-based MacBook Pro) and the speed differences are astonishing, setting aside differences in processor speed. That the applications now run natively on Intel chips rather than in emulation via Rosetta makes all the difference.

Feature sets are comparable with the latest versions of the Windows Office applications but are, in many ways, better (or at least preferable for me, subjectively speaking). Word for Mac does an outstanding job of leveraging the strengths of OS X, integrating it much more with other Mac applications rather than running in relative isolation from them, as its predecessor did. Moreover, it's a marked improvement over previous versions of Word under both Mac and Windows without being such a departure from the menus and icons approach which has been so familiar. Entourage is, in its current iteration, frankly a better application than its close relative Outlook.

Support for scripting throughout the Mac Office suite is excellent. As such, I look forward to exploring those capabilities much more than I have thus far with the assistance of another Mac-loving attorney, Larry Staton, whose Scripting for Lawyers blog I just discovered, thanks to Tom Mighell.

A Moment of Panic This Morning

The following was a headline on Professor Jack Balkin's Balkinzation blog this morning (and cross-posted on Slate's Convictions blog):

Say It Ain't So, Colin

Before I managed to confess all of my misdeeds, I read further and found, much to my relief, that former Secretary of State Colin Powell was the "Colin" in question.

My secrets are safe after all. BWAAAHAHAHA!

An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but this week's Blawg Review will keep him entertained.

David Harlow hosts this week's Blawg Review #154 at his HealthBlawg site. Harlow's Blawg Review was posted yesterday in honor of the World Health Organization's annual World Health Day. I don't know about you, but I felt pretty good yesterday, so it must have been a success. #154 is also a success in my book; highlights of this edition include a rundown of the legal issues surrounding international trade and climate change, Japanese baseball versus Major League Baseball, and a knock-down-drag-out over the Yoo memorandum. Greg May does the hosting honors next week at The California Blog of Appeal.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (161)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, April 2; link good at time of posting):

When Roslan Ngah took a second wife, he might have wondered if she would get along with his first.

He need not have worried. The two women got on so well they decided to leave him at the same time.

Faced with their united stand, Roslan, a 44-year-old Malaysian Muslim, divorced his two wives, aged 46 and 35, in an Islamic Shariah Court in northeastern Terengganu state on Tuesday, a lawyer said Wednesday.

The Star daily quoted Roslan as saying that he was aware his two wives had become close over the years.

"They are like good friends but I never imagined that both of them had collectively decided to divorce me," Roslan was quoted him as saying. "I never expected our marriages to end in this manner."

[Previous TGIS]

Random Thought (9)

None of the people I've fired this morning will believe me. I swear, April first is, without a doubt, the worst possible day to execute a headcount reduction.

[Previous Thought]