The prods I’ve received from a number of people in the last few weeks compel me to state what I can no longer deny: this blog’s “Fire,” whatever it may once have been, has died out. Not even embers here, really; just cold ashes.

I enjoyed it while it lasted. I will post here no more; little loss, really, because I’ve posted here so rarely these last several months.

I’ll keep the URL for a time, so that the site remains here as a record.

Thanks to those of you who commented from time to time. You definitely made the blog better!

You’ve heard of the microblog Twitter, right?

I’ve set up an account there for very short entries about patent law.  It’s at http://twitter.com/fireofgenius

Let me know if you’re also twittering …

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”

- William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, Act I, Scene 3.

From today’s New York Times story about Attorney General Gonzales’s resignation:

As recently as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales was denying through his press spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, that he intended to leave.

Mr. Roehrkasse said Sunday afternoon that he had telephoned Mr. Gonzales about the reports circulating in Washington that a resignation was imminent, “and he said it wasn’t true, so I don’t know what more I can say.”

White House spokesmen also insisted on Sunday that they did not believe that Mr. Gonzales was planning to resign. Aides to senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said over the weekend that they had received no suggestion from the administration that Mr. Gonzales intended to resign.

Earlier in the story, it’s established that “Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said.”

No great harm, I suppose … a few days from now he won’t be able to recall it.

“It is clear, then, that a state exists by nature and is prior to each [of its parts] … and one who cannot associate with others or does not need association with others because of self-sufficiency is no part of a state but is either a brute or a God.”

– Aristotle, Politics, 1253a26-29 (translated by Hippocrates Apostle, Peripatetic Press 1986)

Mike Madison has a wonderful, if scary, post at Madisonian for entering law students.  Give it a read!

In today’s New York Times, there’s a fine article about multiple efforts to create on-line repositories of federal and state caselaw.  Many courts now regularly post their decisions on line.  But these resources don’t extend very far back in time.  The efforts the Times describes take on that latter task.  Check out the story, as well as the two websites discussed in the story: public.resource.org; and altlaw.org.

Friend of TFOG Bob Matthews points out that another district court has recognized the unavoidable - namely, that the Supreme Court’s MedImmune decision displaces the Federal Circuit’s longstanding test for declaratory judgment jurisdiction.  ( I described the first trial court decision here, four days ago.)  The new case is captioned Rite-Hite Corp. v. Delta T Corp., No. 06-C-1187, 2007 WL 725327 (E.D. Wis. March 7, 2007).  Give it a look!  And if you see a decision, let me know so that I can add it to my post-MedImmune tracking page.

Engaging story in the New York Times today, about Edison’s flair for invention and for business.  The author, Randall Stross, has adapted the story from his new Edison biography, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World.  Give the story a look!

“It must be remembered that the public is a silent but an important and interested party in all patent litigation, and is entitled to protection against the monopolization of what is not lawfully patentable.”

Rota-Carb Corp. v. Frye Mfg., 313 F.2d 443, 444 (8th Cir. 1963).