Two heavy-hitting litigators, Skadden’s Tom Nolan and Quinn Emanuel’s John Quinn, went to Riverside, California, a couple weeks ago to fight over dolls. According to the Daily Journal, they’ve also been fighting over hotel rooms. The piece (link unavailable) reports that when Quinn and his legal team, who are representing Mattel, tried to book rooms in Riverside’s Mission Inn , a century-old historic landmark, they found that Nolan’s clients, MGA Entertainment, had the hotel sign a contract barring Quinn and his team from sharing the accommodations. Nolan, whose L.A. office is about 55 miles away from Riverside, said MGA and its former counsel in the case, O’Melveny & Myers, decided the contract was necessary because they had concerns about accidental delivery of their case file boxes or faxes to opposing counsel’s rooms during trial.
Quinn and Nolan are in Riverside to litigate the Bratz-Barbie dispute, in which Mattel accuses MGA of essentially stealing the idea for Bratz dolls. Mattel is trying to seize ownership of the $500 million per year Bratz franchise. MGA denies wrongdoing, and accuses Mattel in a separate suit of copying Bratz. Quinn reportedly asked District Judge Stephen Larson, who is presiding over the Bratz trial, to deem the contract unenforceable and clear the way for his firm to stay at the inn. Larson declined to resolve the dispute. But the contract didn’t end up being an issue. In a conference with Larson, Nolan said, lawyers representing the Mission Inn pointed out that there was “an exception to the exclusionary contract” that gave Quinn & Co. the option of booking rooms at the Mission through a travel agent, but not directly through the inn.
“It didn’t prevent us from staying” at the hotel, said Quinn. Quinn said he and most members of his team opted instead to register at the nearby Riverside Marriott, but half a dozen of his colleagues ended up with rooms at the Mission Inn. He said he opted for the Marriott ($149-$350/night) because it had more amenities for trial preparation and was “less expensive” than the Mission Inn ($215-$2,000/night).
Nolan said an issue arose the day Quinn Emanuel and Skadden lawyers checked in at the hotel. He said a delivery person inadvertently routed a package for a Quinn lawyer to the room of a Skadden partner. Nolan said his colleague brought the box to the Quinn attorney. Now, the entire Quinn legal team, according to the Daily Journal, has since moved to the Marriott.
WSJ Law Blog June 9, 2008

In Barbie and Bratz Case, Is the Chronology the Key?
Heading into the Barbie vs. Bratz copyright trial, it had been assumed that the legal battleground would be a timeline of events: Was Carter Bryant, the designer of the pouty-lipped Bratz doll, still an employee of Mattel when dreamed up the now-$500 million per year franchise owned by MGA?
But according to Isaac Larian, the founder of closely-held MGA, that factual dispute doesn’t pose a problem for his company. On Friday, Larian testified that even if Bryant “was working on [Bratz] or refining them while he was at Mattel, I don’t see a problem.” Still, he said, it was his understanding that the original idea for the doll came to Bryant in 1998 when he was not employed in the toy industry. Here’s the story from the WSJ’s Nicholas Casey, and here’s more on the trial from the L.A. Times.
Mattel, represented by Quinn Emanuel’s John Quinn, accuses MGA of essentially stealing the idea for Bratz dolls, and is trying to seize ownership of the Bratz line. MGA, rep’d by Skadden’s Tom Nolan, denies wrongdoing, and accuses Mattel in a separate suit of copying Bratz.
On Thursday, reports the WSJ, Larian argued that MGA had made no deliberate effort to siphon off doll designers working at Mattel and often simply hired employees laid off from the toy giant. Mattel introduced a November 1999 email, however, where he appeared to contradict this: “Why are we waiting for a layoff?” he asked his employees. “We should aggressively recruit from inside Mattel.” The trial continues this week with the testimony of Mattel CEO Bob Eckert.
WSJ Law Blog June 9, 2008

First came the Amazon book rankings. Then newspapers started tracking the most popular articles on their sites and journalists. But would you believe that academics could become caught up in such petty, vain competition? Of course, you say. Still, short of hanging out in the stacks at the library and peeking over shoulders, the pursuit of that particular vanity had to wait for the Internet, and the creation of the Social Science Research Network, an increasingly influential site that now offers nearly 150,000 full-text documents for downloading.
The network is a business set up in 1994 by five people who saw a niche in online academic research. They pooled their money and began building relationships and the infrastructure to post so much material. All but one comes from the world of economic and legal scholarship, and it is in those areas that the network is strongest, adding an estimated 45,000 articles or so a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/media/09link.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

On June 16, James Joyce aficionados the world over celebrate Bloomsday.
The day is named after advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, protagonist of Joyce's novel Ulysses. The entirety of this book recounts an ordinary day, June 16, 1904, as various characters go about their ways in Dublin, Ireland.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/keats03.html
See whole poem at above link.

A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two-tired.A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France, and resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.A boiled egg is hard to beat.

Act of nature
Severe winds during the last week have sheared off heavy limbs from our three Norway maples. After hearing a loud crack last night, I found one of the limbs had crashed into a bedroom, but it didn’t break the glass. When the mess is cleaned up, I’ll inspect the outside of the house.

To your health Edamame salad
Cook edamame (Japanese soybeans) one or more minutes. Drain and run cold water over them. Add other vegetables of your choice and toss with salad dressing. Many other recipes here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=edamame+salad+recipes

Get thousands of images of Toledo’s Glass Pavilion in seconds.
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&q=glass+pavilion+toledo

Around Toledo
Chef Ryan Reiter and owners Phil Dew and Mark Osborn open the doors of the historic Park Lane on the first Saturday of every month for a simple four-course meal. Cost is $20 per person. The building contains apartments and corporate suites, and is located at 142 23rd Street, one block from The Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion. Call for dinner reservations at 419/255-4006 or 419/255-4007.