My apologies that I have been too overwhelmed with other work to keep the blog updated for March cases. There was an important tribal sovereignty and water rights case argued this morning and a number of criminal cases this week and next, which I must leave to others to preview. (As always, Scotusblog does a great job of that.)
I was unlikely to recommend any of this block’s cases to the casual observer anyway — with the exception of Wednesday’s argument, which one really should not miss if only for a little comic relief (in the context of a serious intellectual property dispute)! Here’s a screenshot from the petitioner’s brief:
Jack Daniel’s Properties v. VIP Products LLC, is the only case being argued on March 22. Lots of fun to be had with this one, but also consider the serious arguments from EFF and a group of 1st Amendment professors, who are of course on the other side of trade groups. The New York Intellectual Property Law Association has an interesting brief “in support of neither party” focused on what the legal test should be when analyzing parody products.