Welcome to Craft on Copyright!

I am an attorney in Portland, Oregon.  My practice right now is focused on business transactions, incorporation, and family law.  I enjoy the work, but I want to shift my focus to the reason why I went to law school in the first place: intellectual property, particularly copyright law from the artist's perspective.  I intend this blog to be a resource for artists, and to generate interest in my practice.  Although I will focus my posts here toward copyright law, and particularly toward music copyright law, I will also post about other kinds of copyright law, as well as trademark law.  I plan on discussing trade secret law and patent law occasionally, but to a much lesser extent as those fields are outside my expertise (and, frankly, interest).

Regarding the blog itself, I hope to post weekly for starters and work up to making daily posts.  I also aspire to generating a great deal of interest, and with that interest, comments.  Until such time as it becomes necessary to revise my policy (if ever), I will have a liberal commenting policy.  The policy consists of three simple rules: 1) no spam; 2) make a good argument for your position; and 3) don't be a jerk.  As this is my blog, I get to decide what those rules entail, and what behavior is outside them.  I promise to abide by them myself, in the interests of equity.  By way of warning, I must admit to an adoration of sesquipedalion loquaciousness.  My feeling on the matter is why use five words when five syllables will do.  I'm not trying to condescend to anyone via my verbiage, it's just what I do.  If you have any questions, please comment.

To start things off (in the very next post!  Hopefully it will be up in less than a week), I will begin discussing the current state of copyright law, including its history and policy determinations that have shaped its course.