I'm working a bit late to get some additional material for my research adviser (read: boss) and while researching Terms of Service Agreements, I came across the case Van$ Money Pie Inc., 47 U.S.P.Q.2d 1020 (N.D. Cal. 1998). For some reason, I'm just not used to seeing symbols in case names. At first I thought it was a Lexis formatting error, but then I realized that it was just a character in the company name. That got me thinking. If I ever start my own company, I should name it something to really screw with Lexis/Westlaw searches. Maybe something like: L! L! L! Love or of atleast57(His!) /3 Pancakes What do you think? Flows off the tongue, right? Amusingly, the proper search for that name would be "love and pancakes." Could life be any more right than that?

My contracts exam is a few short hours away. You think that I'd be vigorously combing my notes and outlines, and absorbing esoteric contracts knowledge in hopes of gaining a few extra points, right? Wrong. I've been spending the morning trying to learn Python. As a result, please enjoy the world's least efficient prime number generator. You'd think that with a degree in physics, I could come up with a more elegant manner of doing this than bashing rocks against it... but you'd be wrong, eh? It does the primes up to 10,000 in about 8 seconds on my Macbook Pro; not terrible, right? Right?? Oh well, I suppose I better get back to contracts, which I'm arguably better at than Python.

It's been a while since I've posted. My time management has been slightly lacking this semester. In addition to my normal hectic 1L schedule, I've also picked up an extra class (internet law) and I am now the research assistant to one of the smartest professors at the law school -- which is great, but it means that I have to do a decent amount of work in order to be useful to him.Anyway, the point is that despite my ridiculous schedule, tonight's post wrote itself.My girlfriend's father noticed that I had a bulge in the side of my back driver's side tire recently, and I knew that my tires were balding anyway, so I decided to have them replaced. Being that my sole source of income (until next week, anyway) comes from loans, I could only afford to get Wal-Mart tires. I did some research and special ordered what I think are the least sucky of the corporate-muscled sweatshop tires that Wal-Mart offers.So they call me today to tell me that my tires arrived. I figured I'd drop the car off before 5 so that I'd avoid the post-work rush. I ended up dropping it off around 4. I ...

 Welcome to Part II of my "Misinformation from Contract Class" series. Today's installment revolves around the legal theory of rewards. In essence, a reward is simply a unilateral contract -- meaning there is an agreement to pay for a service. Let me give a quick hypo to illustrate what we were told in class:Doggy in the Window Hypo:Jack is out enjoying a walk in Central Park when he sees a cute Terrier puppy that he recognizes -- it looks exactly like a puppy that he has seen in the window of a building on his way to work. Jack picks up the puppy and carries it to the building and knocks on the door. A woman with red eyes and a tissue in her hands opens the door, then exclaims, "PRINCESS!" while grabbing the puppy from Jack's hands. While the woman plays with her puppy, Jack looks through the door and sees a giant stack of REWARD posters. Apparently, the woman had been advertising a $5000 reward for Princess. Jack asks the woman for the money and she refuses.My professor indicated that Jack would be entitled to recover. His rationale was that "motive doesn't matter." This stuck me as off ...

I was sitting in my contracts class yesterday, listening to one of my erudite classmates discuss ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996), which deals with shrink-wrap licensing in software purchases. I was happily following along with the conversation until the professor began discussing why he felt the court erred in considering the Uniform Commercial Code to be applicable to the case. His contention is that the UCC's definition of "goods" specifically pertains to tangible objects, and because a computer database is intangible, software purchased in a store such as Best Buy should not be considered a "good."Here is the definition of "good" from the UCC:(1) "Goods" means all things (including specially manufactured goods) which are movable at the time of identification to the contract for sale other than the money in which the price is to be paid, investment securities ( Article 8 ) and things in action. "Goods" also includes the unborn young of animals and growing crops and other identified things attached to realty as described in the section on goods to be severed from realty (Section 2-107).U.C.C. § 2-105I decided to try to clear up my confusion by asking a question in class, ...