Research Gifts To Justices, Politicians

HighBeam is making its service available for free to U.S. Supreme Court Justices, members of the Cabinet, and members of Congress. Here's the press release:

Patrick Spain, founder, chairman and CEO of HighBeam™ Research, Inc., responded today to a congressman's recent allegation that there's something wrong with a member of the U.S. Supreme Court doing his own research on the Internet. In addition, the operator of an online research engine for individuals (www.highbeam.com) announced a program that offers complimentary access to Supreme Court Justices, U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, Cabinet Members and qualifying journalists.

...

"We're certain that if the Justices use their complimentary HighBeam Research memberships, they will find the service quick, accurate and efficient," Spain said. "And we used our own HighBeam Research service to make sure that these complimentary memberships do not violate any rules regarding gifts."

I've heard anecdotally from time to time that Westlaw and Lexis might be available to the staff of various courts on a complimentary basis (maybe courts simply receive more advantageous pricing?). It's in everyone's interest to provide the judiciary ready access to reliable information, but the press release doesn't link to the sources referenced as the basis for HighBeam's thoughts on the gift issue (and I hope HighBeam did more than rely on its bare search results in arriving at what amounts to a legal conclusion). Anyone more conversant than I with the applicable ethical rules care to comment?

(Also, though HighBeam is blogger friendly, I'm wondering what constitutes a "qualifying journalist.")

Good Speakers, And The Price Is Right

If you'll be in Northern California on May 16, you might be interested in a free program to be hosted by Reed Smith from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. in Menlo Park. It's called Success Strategies for Today's Silicon Valley. The program will feature a keynote by Cisco's General Counsel Mark Chandler, about whom Rick Klau has had some good commentary in the past. All of the Reed Smith lawyers involved are dynamic and knowledgeable folks, and the topics include such hot issues as the DMCA and the scope of Sarbanes-Oxley. Two of my appellate colleagues will talk about maximizing your chances of prevailing "before, during, and after trial and on appeal," which, while it might not qualify as a "hot" issue, is an important one near and dear to every litigant's (and appellate lawyer's) heart. You can register at that first link above.

Over Thered

• Kevin Heller: "[I]f you're non-technical and interested in hosting your own blog, I can help you get it going A-Z for rates much lower than lexblog is charging." (Who could resist a Google Fight on that one?)


• Dennis Kennedy: "I can't dance to a copy of your copyright registration form."


• Ernie Svenson: "By ourselves we're kind of lost, but together we know a lot. And search engines like Yahoo and Google and other search engines are good at helping us depend on the kindness of strangers. Oh, and one other lesson: people that run sites like Martindale, which don't let Google index them, are complete idiots." (link omitted) Also: "[S]ome form of stretching, coupled with the indiscriminate use of automatic weapons."


• Marty Schwimmer: "I encourage you, in your special role as 'expert federal legislator,' to consider participating in a somewhat novel communications network for creating a conversation about legislation with concerned citizens: legal blogs."


• My old law school buddy Bob Holtzapple, in the April California Lawyer's IP Roundtable: "For example, Canon buys the ad word Xerox for its copiers so Canon comes up when Xerox is used as a search word. When I try to put this issue in a trademark box and analyze the elements, I come up lacking. I wonder whether the remedy for my Xerox hypothetical isn't trademark law, but some sort of unfair competition claim."


• Gary Turner: "Coveting Thy Neighbour's Wifi"


• And Frank Paynter brings hope that while I've never been any good at math, perhaps I haven't been trying the right kind.

Decisions, Decisions

Via Blogging Baby, "Baby Hell" t-shirts: "You might call these shirts the opposite of Carter's baby clothes." 22 doses of questionable taste sure to keep you chortling 'til puberty.

Mary Hodder, In Paris, On Fire

But keep piling on the Grand Marnier, it's a good burn:

• "Halley Suitt, for her panel tomorrow on Corporate Blogging, was thinking of being very Jean Paul Sartre, which would mean her panel would only IM chat, silently, while the audience chat over IRC..."


• "This audience is creative, bright, thoughtful and our brains are being numbed to death by one-way talk about how blogs are about losing legacy control and we're all taking it back. Somewhere there is a tragi-comedy in here..."


• "And of course, we, the US, aren't even on chart up on the conference wall. And why should we be. As far as broadband access goes, we're a third world country paying ghetto rates..."