My funny, kind, wonderful grandpa died this morning. My family was worried about how to get all the ribbons and medals right for the funeral, but when my mom pulled his uniform, she found a note from him with a diagram of exactly where each one goes (pic next in thread).

Saw some distressing comments on friends' profiles this morning so felt the need to say this: If you're mentioning 9/11 as a reason Mamdani shouldn't have been elected mayor of NYC, you're being super super racist and Islamophobic. Like. unequivocally.

Every single county in Virginia shifted Blue.

Happy Halloween!

Scoop: The Trump admin's videos boasting triumphs on immigration have used misleading footage from months ago or thousands of miles away When we showed them the errors, DHS said they make a lot of videos and the White House said it'll keep making "banger memes" wapo.st/4nuDGwf

DHS says our new piece is "dishonest, slanted, and fundamentally inaccurate" but won't say why. Here's the story where we show with evidence that DHS spliced together clips spanning years and multiple locations to create its own reality. Gift link wapo.st/4nuDGwf

Please enjoy the beautiful display I made for the Halloween office door decoration contest at Willamette! Each candy depicts a registered trademark design (except candy corn, which isn't registered bc multiple companies make it, but people kept requesting it, so I added it with a disclaimer).

So there's a DB Cooper themed brewery not far from our house. We went there last night and it was pretty awesome.

As a reminder, when Biden announced student loan forgiveness—based upon a statute passed by Congress which explicitly said the President could do exactly that—Douthat called it "semi-Caesarist" because it was done "without consulting Congress."

These stories coming out of Chicago are breaking my heart. So many of these horrible incidents are taking place in neighborhoods and locations I loved in law school. They TEAR GASSED a group of protestors without warning. None of this is okay.

Me, driving by Skidmore Street in Portland: "You get NO DEFERENCE. NONE!" (I'm very fun at parties)

For as stupid as it is to say that a goddamn superhero movie imparted some wisdom, the line in the first Avengers movie -- "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on" -- is something a lot of people should be internalizing at the moment.

I also used this one in my class!

Hah this is one of the examples I ended up using in class!

IP Fam- if you have any good examples of patent apps/patents which were rejected/invalidated for being obvious (whether they overcame that or not), I would love to see them! I'd like to go through some with my students in class, but don't have a good collection of my own yet. Thanks in advance!

Okay, so I googled "old technology" just to find some sort of silly stock art to illustrate one of my patent slides in the Novelty section and this is what came up. "Ancient phones" had me CACKLING. Oh my god, it's NOT EVEN A ROTARY PHONE (which we absolutely still had and used when I was young).

BREAKING: Immigration officers in the Chicago area will be required to wear body cameras after the use of tear gas and other actions against protesters, a judge rules.

“Deplorables” was a scandal for years and she wasn’t even in the government yet. This is the White House Press Secretary, whose salary is paid by the American public.

BREAKING from PP We found immigration agents have held more than 170 *citizens* The govt doesn't track citizens held. So we did. We tallied: Nearly 20 kids, two w/ cancer More than 20 citizens held for day or more, incommunicado www.propublica.org/article/immi... by @nicolefoy.bsky.social

My next attempt to add to the general collection of patent memes online:

Willamette is hiring for a tenure-track assistant professor of law position; there's more info at the link! If you are on the market, I highly recommend that you apply. I've been at Willamette a few months now and absolutely love it here. willamette.wd501.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Willam...

Lol oh yikes. I have heard around the Internet that the rights holders to the Grinch are QUITE protective so...that's my personal bet. I think they'll send a c&d first though.

ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the 94 million pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the #Trump administration’s cuts to The Emergency Food Assistance Program. My latest video for @propublica.org.

There are no press releases during the shutdown, making it difficult to find this kind of news. But the AK Air/Army National Guards, and the USCG, are conducting SAR operations. The flooding is in remote areas, and affecting primarily small villages, it appears. taskandpurpose.com/news/alaska-...

THE UNDERLYING PATENT IN PACING TECHS, LLC V GARMIN INT'L INC. SAYS SOME COMPLETELY INACCURATE THINGS ABOUT TEMPO AND TIME SIGNATURES AND IT MAKES ME SO MAD, Y'ALL.

After teaching my first few patent law classes, I have concluded that there are simply not enough patent law memes online. This must be fixed.

Please enjoy my Halloween art! Improvisation inspired by the fact that our 12 foot skelly Indiana Bones has a messed up base and can't really stand right now, lol.

"It's an entire political ad, from a major Democratic politician, that is exclusively defending trans rights. Has this ever happened before?" This is amazing.

John: "why do you have two sets of chopsticks by your computer?" Me: "oh I use them to eat Cheetos." He found this very very funny, but like. It really works quite well for Cheeto eating WITHOUT getting the dust all over your hands. I initially learned this trick from She-Hulk. Highly recommend.

How can he be so big and so baby at once?

he's going to come after you either way, so you might as well act with integrity

I was just wondering how many people have become design patent agents since the new requirements went into effect in Jan. 2024; found these numbers! "Currently, there are 52,970 active patent practitioners (14,207 agents, 37,996 attorneys, 5 design and 762 limited recognition)."

Every network should be diving into this story: www.cnn.com/2025/10/02/u...

The protests are on one block. Nothing is burning down. His justification for sending in troops is all based on lies.

The White House is blatantly violating the Constitution, ignoring Congressionally-allocated spending. Approving any budget would put a stamp of approval on the end of checks and balances. It'll hurt, yes, but it's time for opposition. The political costs will mostly fall on the people in charge.

So much Democrat and pundit handwringing about the shutdown as if they're in charge of the government. They're not. The only possibilities are Trump makes things worse with Democratic approval or Trump makes things worse despite Democratic resistance. Don't bail him out. My latest (on @msnbc.com):

About to fly off to Chicago with John to attend amazing bonus cousin Lauren's wedding!! I actually specifically got this custom TLOAS shirt to wear for my talk on Taylor Swift fan merch and IP issues around it next week, but obviously I had to wear it for release day too!

Today, 33% of all the electricity used in Oregon is attributed to data centers. In Virginia, it’s 37%. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

These scripts are GREAT and these calls are EASY and ESSENTIAL. Call your senators and reps today and tell them to vote against ANY bill that contains cuts to trans health care. #DidThisToday

"Yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment."

We don't often see anaphora like this repetition in judicial opinions. "But not all of them." (law firms) "But not all of them." (higher education) "But not all of them." (media outlets) Constructed through footnotes.

Skipping to the near end, after seeing @kyledcheney.bsky.social 's comments, Young is really upset about masks: "It rejects this testimony as disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable." w/r/t Todd Lyons's claims about masks.

"…to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble of the non-citizen plaintiff members of the plaintiff associations."

As you can tell, Young isn't happy: "this Court finds by clear & convincing evidence that…Noem &…Rubio…deliberately & w/ purposeful aforethought, did so concert their actions & those of their two departments intentionally to chill the rights …

"This case…squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.”"

OMG this William G. Young opinion that just dropped (12:30pm) in AAUP v. Rubio. It begins with a postcard sent to Chambers and Young's reply card: "Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have?" WGY: "We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution"