Mass Law Blog
Intellectual property and business litigation, Massachusetts and nationallyWritten by humans
Lee Gesmer’s Mass Law Blog began in 2005, and contains almost 600 posts. The site initially focused on Massachusetts law, but today it follows business and intellectual property law nation-wide. The site is hosted by Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a law firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm represents startup and established companies in the areas of litigation, transactions (including financings, mergers and acquisitions), IP rights, taxation, employment law, standards consortia, business counseling and open source development projects and foundations. You can find a summary of the firm’s services here. To learn how Gesmer Updegrove can help you, contact: Lee Gesmer
Justice Department Files Antitrust Suit Against National Association of Realtors
Antitrust. Here is a link to the Complaint in this long-anticipated lawsuit. A link to the DOJ's press release, announcing the suit, is here. In a nutshell, the suit alleges that the NAR has blocked competition by allowing real estate agents to withhold listings from brokers who utilize the Internet. The DOJ and the NAR have been attempting for months to negotiate a settlement to the issues raised by this suit, and apparently the NAR made a last gasp attempt last Thursday, when it announced a...
Katrina
Amazon.com "One Click" Contributions to Victims of Katrina can be made Here. The ABA has organized a Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief page here. This web page states: "The ABA is gathering information from individuals who are willing to provide legal assistance to those in need from the events in the Northern Gulf Coast." In considering whether to contribute services consider that a recent survey of Americans shows that lawyers have a lower "prestige" ranking than Members of Congress, and are...
Is the Owner of a Blog an "Interactive Service Provider"?
Communications Decency Act. Traffic Power.Com has sued Aaron Wall, owner of the Search Engine Optimization Blog, alleging defamation and misappropriation of trade secrets. Assuming that the offending material was not written by Wall himself (but rather by one of his posters), the defamation claim against him is likely to be barred by the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA), which provides in part: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or...
GEICO v. Google Over Adlinks
Trademarks. Google sells other companies' trademarks as "keywords" on its Internet search engine. Whenever someone types in one of these keywords, such as GEICO, not only will Google's search results show links to GEICO's web site, but Google also will show advertising for other insurance companies under a banner called "Sponsored Links." For example, when writing this blog, we searched "GEICO" on Google's site and were shown paid links to two of GEICO's competitors, USInsuranceonline.com and...
Electronic Discovery – The New New Thing
Procedure. There are fads in the law, just like everywhere else. Apologies to Michael Lewis, but there can be no doubt that, in the odd and insular world inhabited by litigators, electronic discovery is the new, new thing, and almost everyone is scrambling to catch up. It is what Y2K was from 1997 to January 1, 2000, but unlike Y2K, it's not going away anytime soon. It easy to tell what's hot in litigation: just watch publications like the National Law Journal and the American Lawyer and look...
Copyright Law and Parts Numbering Systems (yawn…)
Copyright. Sexy: Internet file sharing systems, Grokster, sampling, The Wind Done Gone, fair use, the legal standard for non literal infringement of computer source code. Not sexy: copyright protection for parts numbering systems. Yet, believe it or not, from time to time clients do ask whether parts numbering systems are protected. Lewis Clayton at Paul Weiss has written an article (published in the July 8, 2005 issue of the National Law Journal), discussing several recent cases dealing with...
This site is hosted by Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a technology law firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. You can find a summary of our services here. To learn how GU can help you, contact:
Lee Gesmer