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
The Agony of Inadvertant Disclosure
Sometimes being a lawyer is like being an airline pilot - hundreds of hours of tedium, interrupted by moments of sheer panic. In the case of lawyers, the panic can hit from a number of sources: a missed court filing date or statute of limitations, the discovery during trial that your client has failed to produce key documents during discovery, the failure to discover a controlling legal precedent, the realization that a client has lied to you, or "inadvertant disclosure." To lawyers, the term...
Yoko Ono, Ben Stein and Copyright Fair Use
Here is a copy (below) of the June 2, 2008 decision of Judge Sidley Stein in the Southern District of New York, holding that a 15 second snippet of the Lennon song "Imagine," within the feature length movie "Expelled", is "fair use" under U.S. copyright law. In other words, the film makers did not infringe Yoko Ono's copyright rights. "Expelled" is a documentary that deals with "intelligent design" (vs. Darwinism, Creationism, ect.), and is narrated by Ben Stein of Ferris Buehler fame...
Are Judges Intuitive or Analytical? Ruminations on the Cognitive Style of Judges
The best aspect of law school is the subordination of math. Anon _________________________ Are judges good at math? Foolish question, of course. Since many lawyers have a math phobia, it follows that many judges would, as well. Nevertheless, a group of academics gave a three-question quiz to a group of several hundred trial judges. The purpose of the quiz was to determine whether the judges' style of cognitive reflection, as a group, was "intuitive" (i.e., bad) or "analytical (i.e. "good")...
"Employee Non-Compete Agreements: Protecting Innovation or Stifling It?" – Harvard's Berkman Center to Debate Economic Implications of Noncompete Agreement
See Xconomy article here for details. Quoting from the article: Employee Non-Compete Agreements: Protecting Innovation or Stifling It? Thursday, June 19th, 3:00-7:00 pm Ames Courtroom, 2nd floor of Austin Hall, Harvard Law School There will be a panel discussion, followed by a cocktail reception. Anyone is free to attend. You just have to register by June 12 (a week before the event) by emailing your name, title and company to Amar Ashar at the Berkman Center: ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu.
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