Covfefe is real
William H. Neukom Professor, Stanford Law School. Partner, Lex Lumina LLP. I teach and write in IP, antitrust, internet, and video game law
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Covfefe is real
NYT reports TRUMP & MODI had a falling out because Modi wouldn’t back Trump’s lie that he brokered the India-Pakistan ceasefire — a lie 🇺🇸 media has let him get away with with even as India’s media has openly mocked him for it. Video: x.com/thetnholler/...
“LIKE A BROKEN RECORD” Now that the @nytimes is reporting Modi and Trump had a falling out over Trump’s lie that he deserves credit for the India-Pakistan ceasefire, we re-submit to you this clip of an Indian anchor calling him out months ago — even as 🇺🇸 media wouldn’t.
In the 2010s ICE was doing some messed up domain seizures based on US copyright law (@andrewbridges.bsky.social and @marklemley.bsky.social both represented clients on those), and some CSAM based ones that took down all kinds of other unrelated stuff.
Research posts on Bluesky are more original — and get better engagement www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Mongers, ranked: 1. Cheese 2. Fish 3. Rumor 4. Iron 5. War 6. Conspiracy
This is worth more than you might think. It creates a local offense that can be prosecuted and from which Trump or whoever comes after he dies (if he’s not dead already) can’t pardon them.
He can pretend to be dead all he wants. I still want the Epstein files released.
@nealkatyal.bsky.social: “You’ve got the president who's imposed the largest tax increase on American consumers since 1993 … and he did it without Congress saying one word. That is not our constitutional structure.”
No doubt Trump will fire him for cause
CHICAGO…
Missives from the land of the free
Thanks, another good read, though it's addressing a different question: that of copyright for AI-emitted content and perhaps prompts. I'm concerned with AI-emitted content infringing human-authored works from its training corpus. I claim that depends on how LLMs work internally.
That training an LLM is fair use does not imply that every use of the trained LLM is also fair use. An LLM can be used for fuzzy search and phrase embeddings (fair use) or it can emit near-verbatim passages from its corpus.
“…I am infuriated that the Air Force plans to grant military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt. She did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it.” My latest in @thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com/p/honoring-a...
I don't see what the big deal is about Donald Trump entirely disappearing for six days and having nothing scheduled. He probably just wants to spend more time with the Epstein files
Yikes - - the PTO acting director just sent the chief judge of the PTAB to run ex parte reexams instead. Further evidence she just wants to abolish IPRs, never mind the law? news.bloomberglaw.com/product/blaw...
Yep, already cited in the longer paper
The mandate is stayed until October 4 to give the government time to seek Supreme Court review. Notably, the government has been telling the court it will have to pay back the money if it loses. I'm curious if they will change their tune or will be bound to that representation
Oh look we are going to get our first test of whether the administration will appeal or force all litigants to go to court.
Happy to have played a role in this, and to see some of the arguments in Matt Seligman's and my brief on behalf of former Republican-appointed judges and officials show up in the court's opinion and in Judge Cunningham's concurrence
Given that all tariff cases must go to the Federal Circuit, anyone who wants to avoid the tariffs can presumably sue and win. [Well, at least until the Supreme Court weighs in].
En banc Federal Circuit holds Trump's tariffs are illegal. Remands to consider the scope of the injunction given the "no universal injunctions" rule www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-ord...
Right, "for cause" will turn out to mean "anything the administration declares to be cause," whether or not it is proven, related to the job, or happened on the job
Under this standard, every aspect of our economy has national security implications. The conclusion that flows from this, for Trump, is that he should control all aspects of the economy and, hopefully, get a slice of the action, either directly or thru his “protection” racket. Pure Putin.
Armed Police: apparently irrelevant to security, okay to unionize. Patent Examiners: front line national security, unions abolished.
I wrote about the mess this will make for copyright law here: journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/st...
Related to this is a blog post I co-wrote that was published yesterday: scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/08/28/g...
Sure, in writing such an opinion they would have to repudiate express language in their own opinion from four months ago that the Federal Reserve was different. But these days they just avoid that problem by not writing opinions at all
My take is the same as Blake’s. Is this illegal? Absolutely! But the Supreme Court has demonstrated time and time again that it will not intervene to prevent Trump from doing illegal things to the federal government. Could this be the red line? Sure! But it would require uncharacteristic behavior.
Blue states can also buy vaccines in bulk and distribute them via their chief medical officer or via doctors, says @sbagen.bsky.social. The idea would be to make vaccines available to all, including those restricted under RFK lunacy. Great stuff from Sam here: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
Since the law includes separate provisions for sexual and asexual reproduction they will be banning all plant patents as examples of DEI
"Seemingly aimed." My God, these NYT people are obtuse.
This is a short discussion of results from our longer paper, Anticompetitive Directors, forthcoming in the Columbia Law review. Link to that longer paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Lane Miles, @vanloo.bsky.social, and I have a new blog post in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance Overlapping Directors as a Competition Problem, corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/08/29/o...
He can't do that? Another lawsuit in order I pray!
It’s not topically related, I just see them meddling more and more with settled practice, not knowing what they’re doing, and they’re creating friction wherever they can to gain leverage over private parties
The cherry on the top is the essay’s incorporation of Darth Vader’s approach to contract law.
New rule. A parent may only propose removing a book from the school library only after reading it in its entirety and delivering a book report to the librarian. Until then no discussion shall be entered into.
Refusing to act, then falsely accusing those who want to see something tangible done to protect kids of attacking prayer on top of it, is doubly shameless.
CDC employees standing up and walking out in light of the mass shootings, firings, and *waves hands in the air* everything else. #USAnotRFK Lets gooooo
I probably shouldn't put it this way, but uh the "hide reply for everyone" button feels great to press. You decide what your posts are a platform for
I know it's illegal on here to notice that our leaders are actually fighting back in the job we actually elected them to do, but here's the Wall Street Journal bitching about Schumer's "historic" delaying tactics that have left almost 90% of Trump appointee slots empty. archive.ph/2025.08.27-0...
Massive walkout underway at CDC. RFK jr. must resign so that we can be safe.
IP will do just fine. Not in the US, you understand. But lots of countries will continue to grant patents
IP was fun while it lasted
If only the Supreme Court didn't fall for it every time
Yet another example of this administration declaring (in bad faith) an emergency or national security threat (or both) to either take advantage of standby statues or skirt the law altogether.
My article "Protecting Consumers in a Post-Consent World," about how we can broaden antitrust and consumer protection to deal with the fact that we have abandoned notice and consent in contract law, is now published in the Stanford Law Review Online. www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/prote...
A show about people finding clever ways to subvert the incompetent Nazis in charge of their lives. Hmm, that seems oddly resonant today for some reason
#HoagiesHeroes
Yep. Hard to "return" to an office where you never worked, in a city where you never lived, and where they don't have space for you even if you did
Labor law x patents:
You can have your foreign filing license if you just give us 10% of your company . . .
Hey, remember when the Supreme Court said it was okay for Trump to ban Muslims because it was for national security reasons and presidents get to do whatever they want if it’s related to national security? Maybe it would have been better for them not to have done that.
Just in time for Labor Day too...
Please don't give them any ideas . . .
The order by its terms appears to cover those who examine design patents too (but not trademark examiners)
I NEED THAT MOP APPROVED STAT! WE COULD WIN THIS WAR!
Trump just purported to abolish the Patent Office union on the grounds that the PTO is a national security agency
so sick and tired of the worst people you've ever heard of ruining everyone's lives and destroying the planet
Vaccines are safe and effective. RFK Jr. isn’t.
We are in very dark times. It’ll take an entire political/social movement, an overwhelming rebuke at the polls, and a new vision of governance to unstick this country from whatever this collapse is.
NEW: Yesterday, I posted that I was unable to get the COVID vaccine at my VA clinic, and many of you assured me that the new one would be available soon and that I was overreacting. I was not overreacting. I am no longer eligible for the vaccine. apnews.com/article/vacc...
Abbe Lowell and I represent CDC Director #SusanMonarez. Contrary to govt statements, Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor yet been fired. She will not resign. We have issued the following statement:
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), top Dem on the Senate health committee, on this evening's chaos at CDC: “We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired."
It’s outrageous that Sec. Kennedy is trying to fire the CDC Director — after only a few weeks on the job — for her commitment to public health & vaccines. The Sen. HELP Committee must hold a hearing with Kennedy & the CDC Director as soon as possible. Vaccines save lives. Period.
As the saying goes, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. But I guess they won't indict a hero
Consent, authorship, liability, and trust—wrapped in one algorithmic act. If this isn’t the unified exam for law school, what is?
YouTube is using AI to edit people's videos without notice or permission This might actually work as a single unified exam question for all law classes www.bbc.com/future/artic...
Oh look, the thing everyone with even an once of data security knowledge predicted would happen, happened
We will definitely raise it
every irs and ssa employee called this
Yeah, I think the best explanation is that they took it out of the secure SSA environment and hosted a copy at DOGE. It's not like they posted in on AWS. But then again, the DOGE servers were comically unsecured: www.pcmag.com/news/securit...
And the Roberts SCOTUS let it happen.
SCOTUS, characteristically, thought that denying DOGE this information would cause an irreparable harm.
"DOGE" (at least initially) consisted of script kiddies brought in by Musk out of personal loyalty, not experience in government or handling sensitive data. Some had consulted for cybercrime (see link). This is not even slightly surprising. It was the most massive data breach ever carried out.
One day there will be hypotheticals of ‘do you go back in time and kill a baby Donald’ just like Hitler.
Is this going to result in the federal government offering 1 year of free credit monitoring?
No one is safe from the DOGE pandemic of idiotic behavior.
Please read the whole thing www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/america-ti...
DOGE posted all our Social Security data to the cloud apnews.com/article/soci...
You are living through the unthinkable: the president of the United States using the military to seize domestic power. The greatest crisis of executive power in American history, at the hands of the worst, most corrupt, and most unfit president in American history.
Florida banned The Diary of Anne Frank. Whoever signed off on that should have to eat every page of that book — one by one — and choke on the lesson they’re trying to erase. 📚🔥 #BannedBooks #AnneFrank
Going to be wild to have Clarence Thomas and other members of the court write that even the appearance of impropriety is sufficient to allow the President to remove Federal Reserve members from office, and then head off to Harlan Crow’s yacht
There is no good reason why they’ve broken every norm and precedent to insanely empower a criminal president. SCOTUS has sold out America. Period, full stop.
Online age verification is not like "showing ID to buy alcohol" because a) the liquor store doesn't get to scan your ID and store a digital copy of it forever in a database that will inevitably get hacked b) you don't have to show ID to go to the library because they have cocktail recipe books
SCOTUS thought they could ride the tiger and get what they wanted ideologically. In exchange, they would give him everything he wanted except the Fed. Just leave the Fed alone and you can ignore all federal law. But it ended the same way it has for everyone who tried to ride the tiger since 2016.
Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.
So the guy who wants the Nobel Peace Prize and claims to end wars wants to call the DoD the War Department? Mmmkay.
Trump illegally purports to fire Federal Reserve governor. I was going to say I can't wait to see how the Supreme Court justifies allowing this thing they said wasn't allowed just a few months ago, but then I remembered they no longer feel the need to give reasons
“This is about the President of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections.” – Gov. J.B. Pritzker
Can Musk sue his way to the top of the App Store? I asked Stanford Law Prof. @marklemley.bsky.social about Musk's new lawsuit against OpenAI and Apple www.platformer.news/musk-sues-ap...
THE GOOD NEWS: last year's version of COVID booster is being found to cover the new variants pretty well. So even if the newest version, for whatever reason, cannot be issued to the pharmacy chains, get the last version currently in the pharmacy chains and it should be protective as well...
They really want to kill as many Americans as possible
It turns out non-critic reviewers and preexisting critics don't think so; the difference is that they padded the metric with obscure new reviewers after the acquisition
Enshittification comes to movie reviews: When Fandango (which sells movie tickets) bought Rotten Tomatoes in 2016, the review site started rating more movies highly www.statsignificant.com/p/is-rotten-...