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
First Circuit Applies the CDA to Protect Lycos
I've written often about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which protects "interactive computer services" as follows: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker or any information provided by another information content provider And - No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be liable on account of -- (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material...
Everything Old is New Again – The Cost of Failing to Get IP Ownership Assigned
When I began to practice in the area of technology law area in the early 1980s one of the issues we often brought up with clients was the need to get clear ownership assignment of their technology. We wrote articles about this, spoke on the topic, and generally beat the subject to death in publications and seminars. It's surprising (but not too surprising) that seemingly sophisticated businessmen still don't focus on this. Two cases we recently settled are illustrative of this issue. In the...
Jury Trials In IP Cases – "Not"
A few months ago I wrote a blog entry titled "Jury Trials In Massachusetts - "Not" Today I received an email/promotion from the ABA promoting some IP books and treatises. The email also contained these statistics. Since they come from the ABA IP Litigation Committee, I give them a high degree of reliability: Number of IP cases filed in 2002: 7,445 Number resolved by trial verdict: 140 That's 1.9% of IP cases filed in 2002 resolved by trial verdict. The balance were either decided on summary...
Patry on Copyright
Bill Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel at Google (how's that for a great job), emailed me and asked me to mention the publication of his new copyright treatise, Patry on Copyright. I like the fact that Mr. Patry said this about his 5,800-plus page, $1500 treatise: " The book is also chock full of wikipedia references, anecdotes, riffs on logic, congitive linguistics, etc. It is many books in one." Although I haven't seen this treatise yet, I hope that it is a change from Nimmer on Copyright,...
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