FSU College of Law Research Center Blog

Knights Templar Exonerated

A press conference is planned for today in Vatican City to introduce the newly published Processus Contra Templarios, an exclusive facsimile edition of the Chinon Parchment, dated August 17-20, 1308. "Misfiled" in the  Vatican Secret Archives for over 700 years (a cataloging error?!), the document was first brought to light by scholar Barbara Frale in 2004.  It is an account in Latin of the early 14th century trial and investigations into the alleged heresy and blasphemous misconduct of the Knights Templar.  After the suppression of the Templars by papal edict,  the burning at the stake of many Knights, and centuries of  infamy, the Chinon document  proves that the Templars and Grand Master Jacques de Molay were secretly absolved of heresy by Pope Clement V in 1308.   Read an article on the forthcoming publication here, and a translation of the Chinon Parchment here.

Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper

 

Play Ball!

                                                       

            As the Rocks & Sox gear up for the 2007 World Series this week, our hearts and minds turn to baseball.  For books to answer all of your questions regarding baseball and the law, browse the Research Center's collection at  KF3989 and thereabouts.  Legal enquiries thus assuaged, you can get ready to settle in and watch the boys flash some leather, and hit 'em where the grass doesn't grow!

Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper

Path to Legal Academia

This is a good review of a Harvard lunch time presentation by Prof. Daryl Levinson to students interested in entering legal academia.  An excerpt:

Instead of fancy grades, clerkships, and practical experience, the modern credential of choice for law school hiring committees is a graduate degree in an allied field such as economics, political science, and even English or psychology. Approximately twenty-five percent of entry-level professors hired last year had Ph.D.'s, and a large number had Master's degrees. While this is the biggest credential a candidate can have, don't despair if you haven't found the spare five to ten years to earn a terminal degree in molecular biophysics to help you compete for that intellectual property professorship you have your eye on. Levinson reassured the attendees that fewer than half of last year's hires had any graduate training. Law schools value Ph.D.'s because they indicate that candidates have certain qualities. If a candidate lacks the credential, he or she can still present those qualities independently.

Read the whole article here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Magic and the Law

Can magicians keep others from replicating a trick or illusion that they've developed?  Or keep others from divulging the secrets behind the illusion that make it marketable? 

Magicians have an uneasy relationship with Intellectual Property Law. Copyright Law can protect written scripts, stage directions, and recordings of a performance, but not the process or method of the illusion itself.  To patent a process is possible, but the magician would have to furnish a detailed explanation of how the illusion is done, thus destroying the "magic."  Magicians need to protect their secrets from the public, but not necessarily from each other.  It's a widespread practice to share tricks of the trade with other master magicians and publish methodology in  magicians' journals.  Once information is shared within an industry, Trade Secret Law no longer applies.

These questions and more are addressed in a paper by Yale Law School's Jacob Loshin: "Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property  Without Law."   This interesting and entertaining article will eventually be published in the upcoming Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Carolina Academic Press, 2008).  In the meantime, to make a working draft appear, click on this link and whisper  "Abracadabra..."

Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper