December 8, 2006
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I just returned to San Diego from a two-day trip to Seattle. A partner at my firm was giving a talk on the pros and cons of copyright vs. patent law. The thing was, that she didn't actually sign up to do a talk covering copyright. It was supposed to be exclusively patent law, given that she's like, one of the top patent trial lawyers in the country and has never done a copyright case. But they made a mistake in the printed brouchure, and so she had to talk about copyrights. That's where I came in, because I got tasked with putting together the research for the presentation. The problem is that I didn't know anything about copyright either, until last week, and so I spent like, 20 (non-billable) hours putting together this talk. My handout was pretty damn good, I would have to say. Basically, I compared a variety of things in the two areas of law (length of protection, scope of protection, rights of employers, remedies, etc., etc ) then proceeded to launch into a discussion of which was optimal, some changes that should be made, etc. I was happy that most of that stuff actually made it into the ifnal handout, and that we were listed as co-authors (I expected I'd just be ghostwriting).
Anyway, this partner is really awesome, and she loves me for some reason. I wrote this 20 page bench memo on some case I worked on while I was a summer associate, and she thought it was, like, the greatest legal document written in the past 10 years. She still brings it up -- A LOT. So my plan is to live off the reputation I acquired from the bench memo as long as humanly possible. And now I got some points for helping with this talk, which is another good thing to put in the bank.
Anyway, so since I worked so hard on it, she invited me to fly out with her and come to the conference in Seattle. Even though I have a million other work things to do, I gladly agreed. It was great. We flew out yesterday, then had dinner at a nice restaurant. Then today, I went and watched her talk, and a few other talks -- Judge McKeown from the 9th Circuit was one of the speakers, along with Prof. Samuelson who's a copyright professor at Berkeley and a really smart lady. But then I blew off the other speakers and walked around downtown Seattle.
I love Seattle. I walked along Alaskan Way, past all these piers with loading docks, restaurants, ferry entrances, and great views. Then I headed over to Pike's Place Market and explored. Then I headed back to see Safeco Park and this funky neighborhood between there and the main part of downtown. It was cold and crisp -- I had my long leather overcoat on. It was overcast and the trees were bare. And I felt like I was in paradise.
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