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
If Everything Is Conspicuous, Nothing Is Conspicuous: Forming an Online Contract in the First Circuit
Online agreements are nothing new to the Internet but companies are still struggling to implement them in a way that will assure their enforceability. The latest company to fail this test is Uber Technologies. A June 2018 decision issued by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston held an online agreement presented to the users of the Uber smartphone app in 2012 and early 2013 was not sufficiently conspicuous to be enforceable. The terms and conditions stated that users of the app could...
Supreme Court To Decide Whether Copyright Office Action on Registration Required Before Suit
The Supreme Court accepts appeals of very few copyright cases. In the last 20 years it has decided only 14 copyright cases, and most of those involved narrow, highly technical issues of copyright law. However, the Copyright Act (which contains 150,000 words or 250 pages of single-spaced text), is mostly a law of technicalities. One of these technicalities arises out of the fact that copyright registration is a precondition to filing a copyright infringement suit. However, the Copyright Act is...
Disney v. Redbox: Misuse It and Lose It
It's rare to see a court conclude that a copyright owner has engaged in copyright misuse, but that's the position in which Disney Enterprises, Inc. finds itself in its copyright case against Redbox Automated Retail, Inc. The case is convoluted, since it involves both contract and unusual copyright law issues. Disney sells "combo packs," which include video disks containing Disney movies and a piece of paper containing an alphanumeric download code. The download code can be used to stream the...
Federal Circuit’s Fair Use Decision in Oracle v. Google – Astonishing, But Not Surprising
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's second decision in the long-running Oracle v. Google copyright case is astonishing, since it is the first time a federal appeals court has reversed a jury verdict on copyright fair use. But, it's not surprising - the CAFC telegraphed its views on Google's fair use defense in its first decision, which held that Oracle's Java declaring code was copyright-protected ("Google overstates what activities can be deemed transformative under a correct...
Why Didn’t the Blurred Lines Defendants File Rule 50 Motions? (Waiver, again)
You can find plenty of commentary on whether the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled correctly when it upheld a jury verdict that "Blurred Lines" infringed the copyright in "Got To Give It Up." But another aspect of this decision has received little attention, and that is a mistake made by trial counsel for the Williams/Thicke defendants in this case. One of the things that keeps lawyers awake at night (or should) is the risk that they will unknowingly waive a client's legal rights. I wrote...
Ninth Circuit Decides “Jumpman” Copyright Case
In only three years the "Jumpman" case has become an established teaching tool in CopyrightX. I've taught it in the first class for three years running, and I know many other teaching fellows have as well. It's a great way to get people who are new to copyright law thinking about copyright issues, in this case whether a photograph by Nike infringes a photo of Michael Jordan taken by Jacobus Rentmeester in 1984. The two photos are show below: Rentmeester's original on the left, Nike's allegedly...
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