From The American Lawyer
New Blog Alert: Cyberlaw Cases
By Ben Hallman
As reporter-blogger types who spend a fair amount of time trolling cyber space for legal news, we feel it is our duty to let our readers know when we come across a litigation-oriented web site that you would enjoy. We think cyberlawcases.com—a new blog by two professors at the University of California, Berkeley, Brian Carver and Jason Schultz, that seeks to cover, according to the site, "the most important pending legal cases in 'cyberlaw' broadly construed"—fits the bill.... We particularly like that they present cases in a top 10 list, which readers can view several ways (we like this presentation). Debuting at number one on the "most important" top 10: the Google Book Search settlement. On Friday, we caught up with Carver to chat about his new creation.
LitDaily: Hi Brian, we're enjoying your new blog. What was the idea behind it?
Carver: We were already following the cases that look important to us because we want to update our courses for our students. And we remember a time a few years back where there were some great IP blogs. There are still some good ones, but it seems like there are now fewer. In particular we didn't see anyone else ranking key pending cases that stand to make a large impact on law and society. We think it will be valuable to practitioners as well as to the general public.
LitDaily: How do you determine the rankings?
Carver: We spent a few weeks compiling a large list of pending cases. We then each ranked the cases and compared our lists. Then we found commonalities and made a draft top 10. We shuffled a few things around and came out with the final list.
LitDaily: You ranked the Google Book Search settlement number one. What do you expect at the fairness hearing next month?
Carver: The class action was settled to essentially give Google the largest licensing deal in history. There have been some concerns about one company controlling such a valuable corpus. There's lots of people hoping the judge will decline to approve the settlement but encourage Google and the class to come back with a settlement that addresses some of the concerns. We don't think many people want to see the the settlement totally derailed, but some changes are in order. It could be fixed.
LitDaily: It sounds like you agree with those that think it shouldn't be approved, and then amended to make it more fair?
Carver: Yes, I think that's accurate. [Carver said he basically agreed with the stance made by fellow UC Berkeley professor Pamela Samuelson. Here is a link to a paper that spells out her position.]...