The New Hampshire Business Review reprints the Nashua Telegraph editorial on Mort Goulder, a Pierce Law trustee who recently passed away:

Death of a true pioneer

For many of us, founding a company that would grow to become the state’s largest employer would be a life-crowning achievement, one followed by eventual retirement and a retreat from public life.

But Morton E. Goulder wasn’t like many of us.

That’s why only a few words of his obituary appearing on page 31 of New Hampshire Business Review are devoted to his role in co-founding Sanders Associates in 1951, an electronics defense firm that eventually would become BAE Systems today.

He wasn’t like many of us, right up until his death Jan. 25 at the age of 87.

There was Mort the scientist, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate who would apply his degree in applied physics to missile technology at Raytheon until he and 10 of his cohorts departed to found Sanders in 1951 at the tender age of 30.

There was Mort the federal bureaucrat, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and warning from 1973-77 at the Pentagon under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter.

There was Mort the businessman and investor, the 2007 Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year who committed himself to helping others start up businesses of their own. As a founder of the Breakfast Club, he and his colleagues helped to plant the seeds of entrepreneurship in dozens of others. Over the years, the club was responsible for investing in more than 100 business startups.

There was Mort the philanthropist, who dedicated both his time and financial resources to helping charitable causes. He helped to found and served on the boards of many institutions, including Daniel Webster College, Franklin Pierce Law School, Rivier College and Southern New Hampshire University.

There was Mort the town official, who served in a variety of capacities in his hometown of Hollis, including the budget committee, several building committees, the long-range planning committee and the Hollis Brookline Cooperative School Board.

There was Mort the sports enthusiast, an active participant in golf, diving, fishing, hiking, sailing, skiing, snorkeling, swimming and tennis. He played tennis until his final hip operation six months before his death.

There was Mort the traveler, who took his beloved wife Claire on excursions to Australia, the Caribbean, Costa Rica, England, Egypt, France, Japan, Norway and Thailand. He also traveled with others to China, Kenya, Tanzania and to the North Pole aboard a Russian nuclear-powered ice breaker.

And there was Mort the family man: brother, husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

In all these phases of his life, of course, he had no difficulty speaking his mind, sometimes to the detriment of his personal and business relationships. He tended to view the world in black and white and didn’t have much patience for those who preferred shades of gray.

That was particularly evident while serving on various town boards and committees in Hollis and through letters to the editor published in the Nashua Telegraph when he had become a private citizen.

It wasn’t out of character for him to accuse the town selectmen of being “drunk with ego power,” call for voters to replace the entire GOP congressional delegation with new blood in 2006, “even if they be Democrats,” rail against the federal Medicare drug program as a “masterpiece of ambiguity and confusion that could only be concocted by a government bureaucracy,” or describe the state Legislature as “well-meaning people who thrive on public recognition but don’t know what they are doing.”

The opinion pages won’t be the same without him. Neither will New Hampshire.

 

  

In honor of President's Day, the Boston Globe takes note of the school's namesake's memorably unkempt hair:

The New Hampshire Historical Society says a letter written by Franklin Pierce's wife suggests that his somewhat unkempt-looking hair was that way on purpose.

The evidence, posted on the society's Web site, is a December 1857 letter in which wife Jane described the then ex-president resting on a sofa while her maid brushed his hair.

Peter Wallner, director of the society's library, has written a two-volume biography of the only New Hampshire native to become president. Wallner says portraits and photographs of Pierce, who was president from 1853-57, show a shock of unruly hair flowing over his forehead. "Written descriptions of Pierce by contemporaries frequently mention his elegant appearance, immaculate dress, and courtly manners," Wallner says. "Why, then, didn't he comb his hair?"

The letter, recently purchased by the society, isn't conclusive, Wallner acknowledges. But he says it "leads one to suspect that the vanity Pierce showed for his appearance extended to his hair as well."

 

Two members of the Pierce Law community, alum Jason Tuttle ’07 and student Takashi Saito ’08, have recently published law review articles on intellectual property topics. Tuttle’s “Fame v. Infamy: An Analysis of Self-Dilution Under the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006”, appears in the Fall 2007 issue of Bright Ideas, also known as The New York State Bar Association Intellectual Property Section Newsletter. The Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society is publishing Saito’s article, “Dressing Design Patent: A Proposal for Amending the Design Patent Law in Light of Trade Dress” in its August 2007 issue.

Saito’s article analyzes the competing public interests of allowing the public to make, use, and sell inventions for which the patents have expired, v. the right of buyers to know the source of products they are buying through trade dress rights, which are perpetual. A few recent court decisions have held that product designs can be protected as trade dress after the expiration of design patents, but Saito argues that the two types of rights should be based on the same policy.

The Trademark Dilution Revision Act gives special protection to famous trademarks. "Fame v. Infamy" discusses the legal consequences of a trademark’s “fame” being gained by negative behavior on the part of the trademark owner or licensees (self-dilution), rather than the goodwill which the TDRA was intended to protect. Tuttle focuses on self-dilution caused by the owner’s activity.

At this time, the Pierce Law Reporter would like to introduce one of it’s new reporters, 1L Bradley M. Orleck.  So tell us Brad, where are you from?

I hail from Cranston, Rhode Island and spent my undergraduate years at the University of Rhode Island.  I entered majoring in computer engineering and German but graduated with a degree in political science and philosophy.  I once wrote a paper titled Springtime for Camus: A Gay Romp with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard at Berchtesgaden, which combined my interests in aesthetics and existentialism.

How did you end up in law school and why Franklin Pierce?

The worsening economy and decreasing job market ultimately led me to law school.  I started reading the classifieds and found the listings for philosophers (both stand up and otherwise) rather sparse; the job market isn’t as good as it once was a few years ago.  Interest in intellectual property led me to Pierce; I did a twenty-five page research paper on the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (focusing on legislative aspects) for a class which helped to spark an interest in copyrights.

We understand that you’ve been assigned to the administrative beat, covering news from places like the registrar’s office, financial aid, and career services.  Would you care to confirm these rumors?

That is correct.

If anyone would like to contact you about having any event or message posted on the Reporter, how can you be contacted?

Feel free to send a message to , we’ll talk.