Select Page

Mass Law Blog

Intellectual property and business litigation, Massachusetts and nationally
Written 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

American Girl Attempts to Shut Down AmercanGirl.com Porno Site

Trademark. What do you do when someone sets up a web site almost identical to yours, but you can't find the owner of the site in order to sue them? This was the problem faced by American Girl , which sells wholesome girls dolls, clothing and books targeted at pre-adolescent girls, when it discovered that someone was publishing pornography on www.amercangirl.com. (Note the missing letter). American Girl sued the registrar and "John Doe" (legalese for, "I'll name you when I identify you") but...

read more

It’s Hard to Fire the President . . .

. . . of your company, that is. OK, here the facts, minus the legal jargon. You're a businessman with a successful company. You meet someone that wants to go into business with you in a related area. You start a new company, making sure that you hold a majority interest (52.5%). Your new "partner" gets 37.5%, and the rest of the stock goes to a couple of employees. Although your partner is a minority shareholder he's running the business, so you make him president of the company. Almost ten...

read more

Dog Bites Man, Not News

[Update: this case was affirmed by the First Circuit in 2007; link here] Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reports, on the front page of its October 31, 2005 issue, that Federal District Court Judge Robert Keeton has dismissed, under the Communications Decency Act, claims that Lycos was responsible for third-party defamatory postings on Lycos' Raging Bull website. The case is Universal Communications Systems, Inc. v. Lycos, Inc. Apparently there is no written decision from Judge Keeton. The idea...

read more

"Google’s Plan Is Even Bigger Than Microsoft Can Imagine"

Technology. The business war between Microsoft and Google has the Internet and business communities riveted. This is the best business rivalry in years, better than Coke/Pepsi, better than Microsoft/Sun, better than Microsoft/Apple (okay, I'm stretching with the last one). At least for the moment Google is perceived to be, potentially, maybe (no one's sure) a fundamental threat to Microsoft. Who knows, maybe later today Google will release (in beta, of course), an online suite of products...

read more

Categories

Quote of the Day

Top Rated Attorney

Lee T. Gesmer
Rated by Super Lawyers


loading ...

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