They might lose the trademark on the name, but they won't lose the trademark on the logo. It's the logo that is valuable. Most uses of the unadorned name are for descriptive purposes (e.g. when reporting scores), which largely isn't protected by trademark.
Perhaps I'm insensitive, but I don't see the big problem. 'Redskin' has long lost it's power as a disparaging name. Pretty much like "Sooner". It's not a particularly good name for a team, so eventually it might change anyway. I'll put in a vote now for "Gridlock".
You just need to read the ruling to find that an important motion for AF was GRANTED, with only a minor procedural issue (disqualifying the judge) denied. Cooper's motion was DENIED, resulting in a total mooting of his claims in this case.
Back in Reality Universe, the judge ordered a dissolved LLC whose last known financial statement showed a negative balance and an overseas shell corporation essentially no assets to return money. We know that essentially all of the money went Steele and Hansmeier, who are likely judgement-proof. Steele sold his Minnesota estate and moved to Florida, where a primary home is protected against judgements.
Saying "Prenda purposefully uploaded porn to the Internet to bust people" is incorrect.
This wasn't about busting pirates. It was about extorting money. It was irrelevant if the people they extorted actually did anything.
Their business was threatening lawsuits and extorting settlement money. The seeded downloads were just a pretense so that they could use the power of the courts to compel the ISPs to give them addresses. They used porn so that they would have the added threat of embarrassing the people they threatened.
They have admitted that they targeted a younger male in the household. That's a demographic that has lots of disposable income and is especially vulnerable to a lawsuit destroying their credit rating. They are also a demographic that would be assumed guilty in court -- "young guy, yup, he downloaded porn".
I applaud those who stood up this extortion. Pretty much every lawyer will tell you "pay the $3K, or spend $100K on a very public uphill battle to prove you didn't do it. And most people will still believe you did do it."
Remember, you pretty much can't sue for defamation over accusations or claims filed in a lawsuit.
In theory a filing that is really over-the-top could give rise to a defamation claim that would be allowed. The catch-22 is that a claim so wild wouldn't be believable and therefore not credible defamation.
So if Hansmeier want to claim y'all are pirates, and bugger small scaly animals, and steal candy from babies, he can do it with impunity. Just as long as he makes the claim in court.
This is a perfectly reasonable legal pleading, with only a minor issue.
If it is real, it may not have been gotten through proper means. That doesn't mean that it's stolen. The filing clearly states how Gibbs obtained a copy the document, and any original is still available to Prenda, undiminished by the copy. So the question is 'was the release proper'.
Prenda can't claim a copyright on the purely functional accounting data. It's not a breach of attorney-client communications, although that's closer call. Prenda might assert that it's effectively the client. It closer to being a breach of a confidentiality agreement or duty. But any obligation is erased in the case of fraud.
Hansmeier does have a credible claim to not having seen this specific document, and it's reasonable to point out that it's unauthenticated. But given the effort to verify it would be less than the time to write point 2, this isn't an especially useful point. There isn't an objection that it conflict with facts on the record, or that it's not timely (although the reference to motion practice might be read as such).
Tying this into renewable energy is a red herring.
Most renewable sources are indeed irregular and unpredictable. Solar PV is an obvious one. It only works during the day, with most power only during the few hours around noon. And there are both short-term and long term interruptions: a passing cloud can cause a sudden 90% drop in power production, and a storm system can effectively shut off power from the system for a week.
But with current usage levels and patterns that irregularity isn't a crisis. Solar PV and wind power are contribute such a small percentage of the electric power generation that even increasing them by an order of magnitude won't, by themselves, require batteries on the grid.
Batteries on the grid would actually be much more useful to run large power plants more efficiently. It takes hours to ramp up the power output of a large coal fired plant, largely because of the thermal stresses of increasing the temperature of the boilers. Nuclear plants are even slower. The fission reaction is a long cascade of different processes, with many intermediate unstable atoms. Turning up the plant is like throwing a giant log on the fire. The reactor will continue producing lots of power for days, and a major amount of power for the following weeks.
People are missing the crime revealed. It's subtle yet fatal.
They co-mingled 'client' funds with their own.
They had a fiduciary responsibility to their clients to keep settlement funds in separate trust accounts.
Everything else was merely fraud and perjury. Some lawyers do that all the time, and the punishment is typically a raised eyebrow from the judge.
But this is actual malpractice.
I believe this is so serious that the only way to recover is to admit Prenda is the true owner of the shell companies. Otherwise each deposit into the main account is another count of embezzlement.
It's would take months to create a fake paper back-story. One showing that each settlement was authorized by the 'client' and the whole amount was immediately authorized to be paid to Prenda as a fee. This has to be airtight enough to document why trust accounts weren't created, even for a day. To do it in a believable manner would mean creating the accounting story, checking it for holes, then feeding entries into a fresh OS with the clock rolled back, moving the clock forward for each new entry and creating daily/weekly "backups".
Curiously, Gibbs did give them five months. Enough time to create the accounting fiction, while still saving his own skin.
OK, the Gibbs filing just went public. What are the updated odds on Steele and Hansmeier showing up to testify?
My call: essentially zero. Gibbs filed Prenda's balance sheet that showed %69.6 of the 2012 settlement money went to Steele and Hansmeier. Plus expenses, and payments to various family members.
No money went to the shell companies that were supposedly the clients.
At this point S&H's best play is to have AF Holdings pay the $23K and try to have the OSC hearing declared moot.
I'm sure this was publicized as politically motivated payback.
But the motivation for revealing the abuse doesn't change how wrong it is.
BTW, the SUVs used for this detail are not patrol cars. They don't stink of stale coffee, sweat and puke from drunks. They don't have vinyl seats, rubber mats in place of carpet and cracked plastic trim. Instead they are high-optioned SUVs with engine and suspension upgrades. They probably have a light protection upgrade -- resistant to small rounds. And protection detail drivers likely have annual training at Summit Point, where you can see what many D.C. area VIPs are riding in.
The wording is subtle, but the issue of personal jurisdiction (if this court has power over Steele and Hansmeier) can be contested at this hearing.
At this point it's presumed, based on the evidence, that this court has jurisdiction. Overcoming that presumption would require new evidence, new authority, and (presumably) direct testimony. Which might mean that Steele and Hansmeier would have to show up to effectively contest jurisdiction. And then stick around to answer questions ('take the fifth').
Just to be clear about the order: Steele and Hansmeier don't have to appear at the OSC hearing. And they are free to file all the relevant documents they like.
It's just that all *testimony* will be ignored unless presented in person at the hearing and is subject to cross examination.
They actually said it would be given slight consideration instead of "ignored", and that the statement applied to all parties. But it's clear that this is directed at Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy and Lutz, who have been remarkable for avoiding on-stand testimony.
This extra hearing is an additional expense, and a PITA for anyone else that testifies. But considering that it's basically "prove that you aren't behind this", it will either be trivially short (if they don't show) or tremendously entertaining.
Prenda is my favorite soap opera. Knowing that it won't be sweeps week, my guess is the Steele and Hansmeier won't show.
Essentially all court rulings have held that contracts have limited or no copyright protection.
As a practical matter, this is only way the contract system works. If you can't review, copy and edit contracts, negotiations become come much more complex. If you can't file them in multiple places, business record retention becomes much more complicated.
This is an implicitly understood part of the legal system. You don't find extra contract terms explicitly describing how the document may be copied and stored (apart from non-disclosure term, which are not copyright related).
I've always considered this to have an element of lawyers ignoring the rules that apply to everyone else. Lawyers can freely crib from each other, or use boilerplate, yet still charge clients for creating documents from scratch if they wish.
If I saw a guy with a gun on a train, but not actively threatening anyone, I would also pretend that I had something to read or listen to.
Either it's a benign situation and there is nothing that needs to be done. Or it's a dangerous one, and doing anything besides remaining calm would escalate the situation.
Hmmm, I might send a text, if I could do it without drawing attention. That would look pretty much like being engaged with a smartphone.
My guess is that they are using DC power distribution.
With AC power, the voltage crosses zero 120 times a second and a spark tends to self-extinguish. The ionized air that might sustain a spark gets pushed in the opposite direction, and the voltage doesn't rise fast enough to start a fresh arc.
With DC power, there is no zero cross and the ionized air stays in place, sustaining an arc.
A switch or relay that has a AC voltage rating of 250V might only have a DC voltage rating 24V. Specialized high voltage DC relays typically combine several techniques to extinguish the arc that forms when contacts open. They always have contacts that open at high speed, and they usually use a 'blowout' mechanism. There might be several contacts in series, opened simultaneously, to effectively increase the opening speed. The might have the contacts in a vacuum or under high gas pressure. The blow-out might be a "magnetic blowout" which uses a magnetic field to push the arc into a longer path, a blast of compressed air, or even a blank shotgun shell to blow the ionized path away from the contacts.
Back to the point: design engineers that are used to HVAC systems usually get it wrong when they assume that they can use their knowledge with much lower voltage DC systems.
It appears EMI failed to produce directly relevant documents in discovery. And those documents revealed that at least some of the songs at issue were released for wide distribution at no cost and essentially no limitations as part of a promotional issue.
There might be an argument that the documents don't say exactly that. That argument could have been made if the documents had been produced in a timely manner. But not after the plaintiff failed to produce them. They should be interpreted as adverse to the party that failed to produce, and perhaps in the most adverse way.
Without knowing the actual details, this raises reasonable doubt about all of the songs. If some were released for free as promotional material, and EMI sought to conceal that fact to the court, the burden should shift to the plaintiff to prove that not all were released, and the defendant could and should have known which specific songs had never been released as per-licensed promotional copies.
The TSA's justification for failing are often truth
Their excuse for screening failures is often that planes were not put at risk. That's usually true, but mostly because they were not at risk in the first place.
It's been repeatedly demonstrated that TSA security misses over 80% of weapons in 'red team' tests. In some cases it was 100%. And there are many, many other routes to get things into the secure area. The only conclusion we can draw is that there are not terrorists attempting to bring down planes.
Just try getting through the screening without a ticket. It's absolutely against the rules. You'll be treated like criminal for even attempting it. But if they miss checking for a ticket, it's suddenly not a problem.
That should have read "not intended to make a return".
It's not a Ponzi scheme. At most it's tax evasion. But probably not prosecutable as that. With enough clever accountants you can paper over almost any scheme. After all, it's just a matter of intent, and that is difficult to prove.
I'm glad that someone else has noted IV's "investment in lieu of payout" strategy.
Most companies that "invested" were really shakedown targets. They had a choice of structuring the payments as a legal settlement, license fees, or an investment.
By making it an "investment" they got a tax advantage. I don't know exactly how the accounting worked, but I'm guessing that someone made notes during the presentation and the details will leak out in due time.
That would explain why the average investment rate of return looks pretty bad. Some of those "investments" were intended to return money.
It's not clear why this story about another round of investment is being circulated now, but it's very likely cover for a more sinister reality. Or perhaps just cover to delay public awareness of IV's tactics.
On the post: How Trademark Law Can Finally Kill Dan Snyder's Racist Dreamworld
Perhaps I'm insensitive, but I don't see the big problem. 'Redskin' has long lost it's power as a disparaging name. Pretty much like "Sooner". It's not a particularly good name for a team, so eventually it might change anyway. I'll put in a vote now for "Gridlock".
On the post: Prenda Loses Big Again; Court Orders It To Pay Back Settlement Money, Refers To Law Enforcement
Spin as "Win for Prenda"
Back in Reality Universe, the judge ordered a dissolved LLC whose last known financial statement showed a negative balance and an overseas shell corporation essentially no assets to return money. We know that essentially all of the money went Steele and Hansmeier, who are likely judgement-proof. Steele sold his Minnesota estate and moved to Florida, where a primary home is protected against judgements.
On the post: Another Big Loss For Team Prenda, As Their Bills Keep Adding Up
This wasn't about busting pirates. It was about extorting money. It was irrelevant if the people they extorted actually did anything.
Their business was threatening lawsuits and extorting settlement money. The seeded downloads were just a pretense so that they could use the power of the courts to compel the ISPs to give them addresses. They used porn so that they would have the added threat of embarrassing the people they threatened.
They have admitted that they targeted a younger male in the household. That's a demographic that has lots of disposable income and is especially vulnerable to a lawsuit destroying their credit rating. They are also a demographic that would be assumed guilty in court -- "young guy, yup, he downloaded porn".
I applaud those who stood up this extortion. Pretty much every lawyer will tell you "pay the $3K, or spend $100K on a very public uphill battle to prove you didn't do it. And most people will still believe you did do it."
On the post: Prenda Wants Another Judge Who Ruled Against Them Disqualified Because He Gave A Speech
In theory a filing that is really over-the-top could give rise to a defamation claim that would be allowed. The catch-22 is that a claim so wild wouldn't be believable and therefore not credible defamation.
So if Hansmeier want to claim y'all are pirates, and bugger small scaly animals, and steal candy from babies, he can do it with impunity. Just as long as he makes the claim in court.
On the post: Paul Hansmeier Tries To Explain Away Brett Gibbs Revealing Prenda Spreadsheets
A good pleading.
If it is real, it may not have been gotten through proper means. That doesn't mean that it's stolen. The filing clearly states how Gibbs obtained a copy the document, and any original is still available to Prenda, undiminished by the copy. So the question is 'was the release proper'.
Prenda can't claim a copyright on the purely functional accounting data. It's not a breach of attorney-client communications, although that's closer call. Prenda might assert that it's effectively the client. It closer to being a breach of a confidentiality agreement or duty. But any obligation is erased in the case of fraud.
Hansmeier does have a credible claim to not having seen this specific document, and it's reasonable to point out that it's unauthenticated. But given the effort to verify it would be less than the time to write point 2, this isn't an especially useful point. There isn't an objection that it conflict with facts on the record, or that it's not timely (although the reference to motion practice might be read as such).
On the post: DailyDirt: Better (Bigger) Batteries
Most renewable sources are indeed irregular and unpredictable. Solar PV is an obvious one. It only works during the day, with most power only during the few hours around noon. And there are both short-term and long term interruptions: a passing cloud can cause a sudden 90% drop in power production, and a storm system can effectively shut off power from the system for a week.
But with current usage levels and patterns that irregularity isn't a crisis. Solar PV and wind power are contribute such a small percentage of the electric power generation that even increasing them by an order of magnitude won't, by themselves, require batteries on the grid.
Batteries on the grid would actually be much more useful to run large power plants more efficiently. It takes hours to ramp up the power output of a large coal fired plant, largely because of the thermal stresses of increasing the temperature of the boilers. Nuclear plants are even slower. The fission reaction is a long cascade of different processes, with many intermediate unstable atoms. Turning up the plant is like throwing a giant log on the fire. The reactor will continue producing lots of power for days, and a major amount of power for the following weeks.
On the post: Oops: Brett Gibbs Releases Spreadsheet Showing 70% Of Prenda Proceeds Went To Steele & Hansmeier
They co-mingled 'client' funds with their own.
They had a fiduciary responsibility to their clients to keep settlement funds in separate trust accounts.
Everything else was merely fraud and perjury. Some lawyers do that all the time, and the punishment is typically a raised eyebrow from the judge.
But this is actual malpractice.
I believe this is so serious that the only way to recover is to admit Prenda is the true owner of the shell companies. Otherwise each deposit into the main account is another count of embezzlement.
It's would take months to create a fake paper back-story. One showing that each settlement was authorized by the 'client' and the whole amount was immediately authorized to be paid to Prenda as a fee. This has to be airtight enough to document why trust accounts weren't created, even for a day. To do it in a believable manner would mean creating the accounting story, checking it for holes, then feeding entries into a fresh OS with the clock rolled back, moving the clock forward for each new entry and creating daily/weekly "backups".
Curiously, Gibbs did give them five months. Enough time to create the accounting fiction, while still saving his own skin.
On the post: Oops: Brett Gibbs Releases Spreadsheet Showing 70% Of Prenda Proceeds Went To Steele & Hansmeier
Even so, accusation of computer hacking in 3..2..1..
On the post: Judge Isn't Buying Team Prenda's Excuses
My call: essentially zero. Gibbs filed Prenda's balance sheet that showed %69.6 of the 2012 settlement money went to Steele and Hansmeier. Plus expenses, and payments to various family members.
No money went to the shell companies that were supposedly the clients.
At this point S&H's best play is to have AF Holdings pay the $23K and try to have the OSC hearing declared moot.
On the post: Political Entitlement: Maryland AG Accused Of Regularly Turning On Sirens, Ordering Troopers To Drive Dangerously
But the motivation for revealing the abuse doesn't change how wrong it is.
BTW, the SUVs used for this detail are not patrol cars. They don't stink of stale coffee, sweat and puke from drunks. They don't have vinyl seats, rubber mats in place of carpet and cracked plastic trim. Instead they are high-optioned SUVs with engine and suspension upgrades. They probably have a light protection upgrade -- resistant to small rounds. And protection detail drivers likely have annual training at Summit Point, where you can see what many D.C. area VIPs are riding in.
On the post: Judge Isn't Buying Team Prenda's Excuses
At this point it's presumed, based on the evidence, that this court has jurisdiction. Overcoming that presumption would require new evidence, new authority, and (presumably) direct testimony. Which might mean that Steele and Hansmeier would have to show up to effectively contest jurisdiction. And then stick around to answer questions ('take the fifth').
On the post: Judge Isn't Buying Team Prenda's Excuses
It's just that all *testimony* will be ignored unless presented in person at the hearing and is subject to cross examination.
They actually said it would be given slight consideration instead of "ignored", and that the statement applied to all parties. But it's clear that this is directed at Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy and Lutz, who have been remarkable for avoiding on-stand testimony.
This extra hearing is an additional expense, and a PITA for anyone else that testifies. But considering that it's basically "prove that you aren't behind this", it will either be trivially short (if they don't show) or tremendously entertaining.
Prenda is my favorite soap opera. Knowing that it won't be sweeps week, my guess is the Steele and Hansmeier won't show.
On the post: Apple Makes Questionable Copyright Claim To Pull Down iTunes Contract
Contracts have very "thin" copyright protection
As a practical matter, this is only way the contract system works. If you can't review, copy and edit contracts, negotiations become come much more complex. If you can't file them in multiple places, business record retention becomes much more complicated.
This is an implicitly understood part of the legal system. You don't find extra contract terms explicitly describing how the document may be copied and stored (apart from non-disclosure term, which are not copyright related).
I've always considered this to have an element of lawyers ignoring the rules that apply to everyone else. Lawyers can freely crib from each other, or use boilerplate, yet still charge clients for creating documents from scratch if they wish.
On the post: DA Claims Mobile Phone Obsession Resulted In No One Noticing Guy With Gun On SF Train
If I saw a guy with a gun on a train, but not actively threatening anyone, I would also pretend that I had something to read or listen to.
Either it's a benign situation and there is nothing that needs to be done. Or it's a dangerous one, and doing anything besides remaining calm would escalate the situation.
Hmmm, I might send a text, if I could do it without drawing attention. That would look pretty much like being engaged with a smartphone.
On the post: NSA's Massive Utah Datacenter Having Serious Electrical Problems: Has Already Had 10 Fiery Explosions
With AC power, the voltage crosses zero 120 times a second and a spark tends to self-extinguish. The ionized air that might sustain a spark gets pushed in the opposite direction, and the voltage doesn't rise fast enough to start a fresh arc.
With DC power, there is no zero cross and the ionized air stays in place, sustaining an arc.
A switch or relay that has a AC voltage rating of 250V might only have a DC voltage rating 24V. Specialized high voltage DC relays typically combine several techniques to extinguish the arc that forms when contacts open. They always have contacts that open at high speed, and they usually use a 'blowout' mechanism. There might be several contacts in series, opened simultaneously, to effectively increase the opening speed. The might have the contacts in a vacuum or under high gas pressure. The blow-out might be a "magnetic blowout" which uses a magnetic field to push the arc into a longer path, a blast of compressed air, or even a blank shotgun shell to blow the ionized path away from the contacts.
Back to the point: design engineers that are used to HVAC systems usually get it wrong when they assume that they can use their knowledge with much lower voltage DC systems.
On the post: EMI Was Actively Giving Away MP3s It Accused Michael Roberston Of Downloading Illegally
Real issue is the discovery failure
There might be an argument that the documents don't say exactly that. That argument could have been made if the documents had been produced in a timely manner. But not after the plaintiff failed to produce them. They should be interpreted as adverse to the party that failed to produce, and perhaps in the most adverse way.
Without knowing the actual details, this raises reasonable doubt about all of the songs. If some were released for free as promotional material, and EMI sought to conceal that fact to the court, the burden should shift to the plaintiff to prove that not all were released, and the defendant could and should have known which specific songs had never been released as per-licensed promotional copies.
On the post: 9-Year-Old Sneaks Onto Flight; TSA Blames The Government Shutdown, Then Says It Did Its Job Just Fine
The TSA's justification for failing are often truth
It's been repeatedly demonstrated that TSA security misses over 80% of weapons in 'red team' tests. In some cases it was 100%. And there are many, many other routes to get things into the secure area. The only conclusion we can draw is that there are not terrorists attempting to bring down planes.
Just try getting through the screening without a ticket. It's absolutely against the rules. You'll be treated like criminal for even attempting it. But if they miss checking for a ticket, it's suddenly not a problem.
On the post: The National Weather Service Sends Hidden Message To Congress In Forecast
On the post: Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Running Out Of Cash; Looking For $3 Billion From Investors
It's not a Ponzi scheme. At most it's tax evasion. But probably not prosecutable as that. With enough clever accountants you can paper over almost any scheme. After all, it's just a matter of intent, and that is difficult to prove.
On the post: Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Running Out Of Cash; Looking For $3 Billion From Investors
Most companies that "invested" were really shakedown targets. They had a choice of structuring the payments as a legal settlement, license fees, or an investment.
By making it an "investment" they got a tax advantage. I don't know exactly how the accounting worked, but I'm guessing that someone made notes during the presentation and the details will leak out in due time.
That would explain why the average investment rate of return looks pretty bad. Some of those "investments" were intended to return money.
It's not clear why this story about another round of investment is being circulated now, but it's very likely cover for a more sinister reality. Or perhaps just cover to delay public awareness of IV's tactics.
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