The Blue Wars: A Report from the Front | The Harvard Law Record

"The Harvard Law Review Association (Harv. L. Rev. Ass’n) has been paying lawyers from the white–shoe law firm of Ropes & Gray LLP to read my tweets. Letter from Peter M. Brody, Partner, Ropes & Gray LLP, to Carl Malamud, President, Public Resource & Christopher Jon Sprigman, Professor of Law, N.Y. Univ. Sch. of Law (Dec. 24, 2015) (on file with the Internet) ('I write concerning Mr. Malamud’s recent Twitter postings.'). In Fiscal Year 2014, Harv. L. Rev. Ass’n paid Ropes & Gray LLP $193,611 in legal fees, presumably only a small portion of which went to their @carlmalamud-tweet-reading task force. Harv. L. Rev. Ass’n, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, Form 990, Internal Revenue Service (Feb. 15, 2015). The subject of this legal inquisition is a work you all know well: The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. A series of letters from Ropes & Gray LLP firmly asserted and repeatedly reminded me of the legal protections surrounding this work including trademark and copyright protections. THE BLUEBOOK A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION, Registration No. 3,886,986; THE BLUEBOOK, Registration No. 3,756,727; The Bluebook A Uniform System of Citation, 20th edition, Copyright Registration No. TX0008140199 (June 5, 2015) ..."