Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Cooley Godward opens Harvard cyberlaw fellowship

By Brendan Lynch

Cooley Godward Kronish LLP reports it has launched a fellowship at Harvard University’s Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Financial details of the fellowship were not released, but the 675-lawyer firm said it will support the position for five years.

The Cooley fellow is expected to teach topics including online speech and anonymity, open access, digital copyright and fair use, software and music licensing, patent reexaminations and protection of children using the Internet, according to the law firm. The fellow is also intended to aid the representation of clients, including individuals, startups, nonprofits and government entities. The law firm said it also plans for its attorneys to help with some of the Cyberlaw Clinic’s cases and perform on-campus presentations.

Recent Cyberlaw Clinic cases include the submission of an amicus curiae brief urging a broad reading of the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP law to apply to defendants who are members of the news media or who receive compensation for blogging; and a brief challenging two broad injunctions issued by a federal judge in San Francisco that effectively shut down the web site wikileaks.org over its posting of bank records released by a purported employee whistleblower. The Clinic also prepared and submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office requesting an exemption for abandoned digital rights management systems from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act anti-circumvention provisions.

Cooley Godward is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and has an office in the Prudential Tower in Boston.