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
Covenant Not-to-Compete Not Enforceable Against English-Challenged Russian Immigrant
It's a bad day when your client wants you to enforce a noncompete agreement against a $10/hour Russian immigrant with "a very limited command of English," who sends most of her earnings back to her son and elderly parents in Russia, and who, after a year of at-will employment and with no further payment of consideration, was told that unless she signed the noncompete agreement she'd be fired the next day. Nevertheless, that's what the plaintiff's lawyer faced in Zabota Community Center, Inc....
Long-Awaited Rambus FTC Decision
Here is a link to the FTC decision, which is adverse to Rambus. More to come .... [Link] Update: Andy Updegrove discusses the background of this case and the implications of the decision on Consortiuminfo.com: In what can only be called a stunning development in a high profile standards case, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) unanimously reversed the earlier decision of one of its own Administrative Law Judges and ruled that semiconductor technology company Rambus, Inc. had "unlawfully...
Antitrust and the "Single Entity" Doctrine
It is axiomatic that an entity cannot "conspire" with itself. For example, the Supreme Court has held that a parent corporation and its subsidiary are not capable of an illegal conspiracy under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Of course, as is true with most legal principles, what looks simple at 30,000 feet altitude becomes more complicated the closer one gets to the ground, and the courts have struggled with the definition of a "single entity" in a variety of contexts. Dean Williamson of the DOJ...
Supernova 2006: Connecting in Complex World
I usually find the Knowledge@Wharton reports and articles interesting. Here is a series of articles summarizing some of the topics discussed at their annual Supernova Conference, which was held in San Francisco in late June. The topics include: What's the Future of Desktop Software -- and How Will It Affect Your Privacy? Kevin Lynch on Adobe's Plans for a New Generation of Software The Rise of the 'Videonet' Tantek
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