Techlaw’s Greatest Hits

The Guardian’s technology writers have put together a feature on the “top ten” cases about technology. Running from newest (Grokster) to the Statute of Anne (oldest), it may be useful to all the law teachers out there.

For some reason that I cannot understand, the articles on the website include no links to the *actual* cases. So I’ve collected them, and reproduced them below. Feel free to use/reuse if they’re useful!

• MGM v Grokster: Supreme Court opinions
• Sklyarov: EFF index (contains filings, news reports etc – this was a jury case)
• Demon v Godfrey: the pre-trial motion decision that is the important bit (the case itself was settled out of court)
• US v Microsoft: Index of decisions, filings etc from the Dept. of Justice.
• Sony v Universal (‘the Betamax case’): Supreme Court opinions
• Apple v Apple: the 2006 case (High Court, England), the 1991 settlement
• Apple v Franklin: Circuit Court opinions
• Marconi v US: Supreme Court opinions
• Bell v Western Union (1879: I don’t believe this is online)
• Statute of Anne (Copyright)

Actually, I think that inclusion of some of the tech-free speech cases (e.g. ACLU v Reno) would have been a good idea – I actually don’t think Apple v Apple really belongs in there, and I don’t think it has much value outside of conventional trademark law analysis. But quibbles aside, it’s useful. What would you change?

Bonus ideas-for-teaching link: Peter Yu on Teaching International IP Law via SSRN.