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Originally posted by Not Me
What an idiot you are. First, I am a registered patent attorney and my primary workload involves patent litigation. Yeah, that's real backwater. No money at all in patent litigation.
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If there is one thing that I feel strongly about, it's that patent attorneys should stick to patents and stay the fuck away from trademark and copyright law.
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Second, copyrights are huge in protectng software.
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Correct, at least for consumer software and mass market business software. For custom stuff, not so much.
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That is how you go after people who pirate copies of your code. Moreover, unlike patent protection, certain violations of copyrights can involve criminal penalties. The threat of criminal penalties is a big stick deterrant to copyright infringement caused by selling pirated copies of software.
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Besides the recent actions of the Justice Department, the last reported criminal case of which I am aware in copyright is from the '70s and reads like a rejected script for Starsky and Hutch. It sounds good in the demand letters, but its a pretty empty threat.
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On the civil side, you also see prevailing party's attorney's fees awarded routinely in copyright cases, which is not common in patent infringement cases, and which is another big stick deterrant.
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While it varies a great deal by court, I wouldn't call the award of attorney's fees in copyright cases "routine." Interestingly, copyright is one of the few areas where the defendant may be able to collect attorney's fees in a case where a plaintiff would be statuatorily prohibited for the same (a plaintiff must show registration prior to infringment & an "exceptional case", a defendant must simply show an "exceptional case," i.e. plaintiff bad faith). Compare that with patent's treble damages (there's some serious money).
In the end, though, the Olympics question boils down to what can one throw up and stick, if you're the IOC and you're serious. Copyright in the telecasts, if your contract with the local broadcaster reserves to you those rights. Trademark violations for the terms Olympics and the five rings. False endorsement or false affliation or sponsorship (at any rate, one or more Lanham Act Sec 43 claims), perhaps, if the teams have given you their proxy (technically, on this last point, I'd think the various teams, or perhaps even the individuals portrayed, would have to be named as plaintiffs, but one could write a consolidated demand letter).
But the IOC isn't in the business of suing political parties. They want to be out of the political arena altogether. Which is kind of their point.
