Read this morning's Supreme Court 8-0 decision here. (Justice Breyer did not participate.) The first three paragraphs of Justice Kennedy's opinion sum things up nicely: POM Wonderful LLC makes and sells pomegranate juice products, including a pomegranate-blueberry juiceblend. App. 23a. One of POM’s competitors is the Coca-Cola Company. Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid Division makes a juice […]

by Paul Alan Levy CafePress has responded to our letter to the political action committee Ready for Hillary by agreeing that Dan McCall's Ready for Oligarchy parodies are protected by the First Amendment as well as by the doctrine of fair use; it is in the process of restoring the parodies to its onlne store.  […]

by Jeff Sovern That's the question raised by my letter in the Times.  Here's the relevant portion of the letter: Candice Anderson was charged with manslaughter and ultimately pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide for an accident leading to the death of her boyfriend. Now that G.M. has concluded that the accident was caused not by […]

Last summer, we told you about my office's amicus brief in the Second Circuit on behalf of 15 leading national disability rights organizations and academic researchers. The case is Authors Guild, Inc. v. Hathitrust, No. 12-4547, and the brief urged the court of appeals to uphold a district court ruling that the HathiTrust's effort to make […]

That's the title of this article about binding consumer arbitration by Lina Khan, a reporter and policy analyst with the Markets, Enterprise and Resiliency Initiative at the New America Foundation. I was alerted to this article by arbitration expert Paul Bland at Public Justice. Paul called it "one of the best pieces of journalism ever […]

Here's what the White House says about the President's action yesterday on student loans: More students than ever before are relying on student loans to pay for their college education. 71 percent of students earning a bachelor's degree graduate with debt, averaging $29,400. While most students are able to repay their loans, many feel burdened […]

by Paul Alan Levy Last week, the pre-campaign PAC promoting Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, Ready for Hillary, demanded that both Zazzle and CafePress, the rival print-to-order companies that designers use to fill orders for Tshirts and other paraphernalia displaying their designs, stop selling material displaying the following design: The design, created by Liberty Maniac’s Dan […]

That's the question discussed in Taxing the Unheavenly Chorus: Why Section 501(c)(6) Trade Associations are Undeserving of Tax Exemption by law professor Philip Hackney. Here is the abstract: Our federal, state, and local governments provide a subsidy that enhances the political voice of business interests. This article discusses the federal subsidy for business interests provided […]