Tony Rutkowski, reporting the DC Circuit's affirmance of Thomas v. NSI/NSF
on Friday writes:
The language vis-a-vis
>Network Solutions' role under the NSF cooperative
>agreement should be fairly dispositive regarding
>matters, for example, relating to its intellectual
>property.
>
>See below and at
>http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/199905/98-5502a.txt
>
That strikes me as kind of a silly use of the word 'dispositive.' The case
was does not interpret the Cooperative Agreement's terms relating to
intellectual property, and a passage you didn't cite states:
"As a registry, NSI maintains a top-level domain's zone files, the
directory databases listing domain names and their IP numbers."
Interesting words in this passage are "maintains" - not "creates or
selects", and "directory", not "customer list." But all in all, the Feist
case is going to be more relevant to the question of copyrightability of
the underlying data in the zone files. This case is relevant but not the
main event.
But the preemptive "spin" given this case by Mr. Rutkowski raises a more
interesting question:
Mr. Rutkowski, are you presently retained by NSI as a lawyer?
If not, is NSI communicating with you regarding its legal strategy, and
providing you access to confidential information regarding its contractual
dealings with the USG?
If the answers to the first two questions are no, are you working on spec,
relying merely on publicly available info?
