It reads like the kind of not-quite-best-selling fiction that you might imagine only stranded travelers would resort to reading: a prototype cell phone goes missing and photos of it in a disassembled state show up on a technology news web site weeks later, apparently having changed hands for thousands of dollars along the way. It’s hardly Harry Potter. It is, however, an article in the L.A. Times; a secret prototype of Apple’s next iPhone has been photographed and posted on Gizmodo.com, and Gizmodo admits to having paid $5,000 for the privilege.

The bulk of the article recounts how exactly the phone came to be in the possession of Gizmodo, and eventually points out that the phone may have been stolen. The story reported that Gizmodo may be in the clear, because journalists generally don’t face penalties for being in receipt of stolen documents.  However, depending on what some very specific facts turn out to be, Gizmodo may actually be in serious trouble. Read more »

By Dominic Mauro

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and the legal journalists at Legal as She is Spoke got to thinking about romance…albeit cynically.

It’s a familiar story:  Boy meets girl, boy swoons over girl, boy heeds Grammy award-winning Beyoncé Knowles’ advice, and asks for her hand in marriage while giving her an engagement ring, boy asks for her hand in marriage, and …boy marries girl.  But sometimes life just doesn’t turn out like that.  Sometimes, boy and girl get engaged and end up saying “I don’t” instead of “I do”.  Although the very notion shocks the conscience and offends traditional notions of fair play, sometimes, Reader, she does not marry him.  And in such cases, who gets to keep the engagement ring?

As is the case with so many legal questions, the short answer is “it depends.” Read more »

By Trevor Timm

While most of the media attention about Conan O’Brien’s exit agreement with NBC has focused on the large $45 million payout for him and his staff, and the “non-disparagement” clause that prevents him from publicly criticizing his former employers, the press overlooked an equally interesting provision that keeps all of Conan’s characters in the hands of NBC.

The copyrights to popular characters from Late Night with Conan O’Brien and the Tonight Show such as Masturbating Bear, Conando, and Pimpbot 5000 will still be owned by NBC, as well as recurring comedy bits such as “Year 3000” and “Desk Driving.” Because the two parties agree that the characters are “work-for-hire”—meaning that since NBC paid the writers to create them for the show, they also own the copyrights—Mr. O’Brien cannot use them for any other show he might host in the future. However, the agreement does bring up other unanswered questions about one character in particular and the music that usually accompanied the other characters’ appearances. Read more »

By the LASIS Staff

When administrators at Wisconsin’s Waupun prison heard from a jailhouse snitch that inmate Kevin Singer was forming a well-organized gang of prisoners, they struck first, storming his cell and penetrating the epicenter of his group’s operations – his Dungeons & Dragons board game.

The media jumped on the story as a good opportunity to take a few jabs at our criminal justice system.  The New York Times opened its article  with “Prisons can restrict the rights of inmates to nerd out,” and the New York Post relegated the matter to its  Weird but true section.  But in fact, underneath the headline-grabbing amusement factor, the story of this ban and the subsequent lawsuit and ruling, wrestle with serious legal issues.

Read more »

By Ted Wills

Recent media accounts of the Scott Roeder murder trial have sacrificed a precise portrayal of the law for attention-grabbing headlines. Headlines such as “Manslaughter Defense Allowed in Abortion Killing: ‘Voluntary Manslaughter’ Defense Would Carry 5-Year Sentence Instead Of Life in Prison” are misleading at best, and add fuel to the fire of the culture wars.

It took a jury just 37 minutes to convict Scott Roeder of first-degree murder in the shooting death of George Tiller, a Kansas abortion doctor who specialized in the legal, though controversial practice of performing late-term abortions.

The evidence was clear enough: Witnesses testified that Roeder walked into a church service and shot Dr. Tiller in the head before a crowd of terrified parishioners. Roeder was quickly apprehended—his shoes soaked in Tiller’s blood. However, in a pretrial ruling that aroused consternation across the nation, the trial judge ruled that Roeder would be allowed to present evidence to establish a defense of voluntary manslaughter. Under Kansas law, this defense is available to a charge of first-degree murder if at the time of the murder, the defendant had an honest belief, even if unreasonable, that his use of force was necessary to prevent imminent, unlawful harm to another.

Read more »