Every once in a while, my hobby intersects with my profession. That was the case a year ago when I wrote about the controversy between Dayan and Seven Towns over the latter’s (largely exaggerated, I believe) position that it had a copyright/trade dress claim against any cube maker using the standard yellow-white/red-orange/blue-green color scheme. And it’s the case again now, with my recent project to decorate my new office. I figured that the lawyer who deals with patents by day and speedcubes in his free time might as well have some topical art.
I downloaded a variety of cube related patents, ranging from the very first related patent of which I’m aware (from the 60s), the Japanese magnetic 2×2 patent from the 70s, the Hungarian and US Rubik patents from the early 80s, the (in)famous Verdes V-Cube patents, and the (relatively) recent Dayan ones. In Photoshop, I assembled them into a composite with the abstract pages and key diagrams, had it printed at 24×36 by Kinkos (for $4.50), and framed it (via Aaron Brothers for $35). Voila! Legal-cube-nerd art:
Click on the thumbnail to expand. I’m not convinced there’s a high demand for this sort of thing, but, just in case, here are links for downloading it:
And if the composite file isn’t enough, here’s a video. A veritable multimedia smorgasbord!
For once my hobby intersects with my day job. (Yes, I’m a laywer. Not an IP lawyer per se, but I certainly deal with IP issues and work with a handful of really great IP lawyers.) Seven Towns is the exclusive licensee of IP associated with the Rubik’s Cube. That gives them the ability to enforce their IP rights as though they’re the actual owner of the IP. Although I can’t find the primary source, it seems that Seven Towns recently complained to Dayan (a leading manufacturer of competing speed cubes) that Dayan’s cubes infringe copyrights held in the original Rubik’s Cube. (See 
adventures in cubing 