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
93A Opinion in Baker v. Goldman Sachs: What Happens When You Mix In Equal Parts A Start-Up, a Fraudulent Purchaser, a Tech Bubble and a New York Investment Banker?
Earlier this year, on the eve of trial in Baker v. Goldman Sachs in federal district court in Boston, I published a blog post describing the facts behind this unusual case, which involved the acquisition of Dragon Systems by Lernout & Hauspie in a $600 million all-stock deal. Soon after the acquisition closed the market discovered that Lernout had fabricated its Asian sales figures. This was quickly followed by Lernout's bankruptcy, which left Dragon (owned by the Bakers, husband and wife...
Rent-A-PC Fails to Enforce Restrictive Covenants Against Former Employees
In this May 28th, 2013 decision by Massachusetts Federal District Court Judge George O'Toole, Rent-A-PC unsuccessfully sought to obtain a preliminary injunction against two former employees, and to enforce a confidentiality agreement against a third. As to two of the employees, Rent-A-PC attempted to enforce a one year covenant not to compete. Judge O'Toole denied that motion, finding that the employees underwent several material changes to their employment, making it likely that their...
Aereo, Antenna Farms and Copyright Law: Creative Destruction Comes to Broadcast TV (Part 3)
Click here for Part 1 in this series of posts, here for Part 2. In Parts 1 and 2 of this series of posts I discussed how Aereo designed its broadcast-TV-to-Internet system to fit within the ruling established by the Second Circuit in the Cablevision case anticipating that it would be sued for copyright infringement by a group of broadcasters. The broadcasters did file suit against Aereo, and in the Second Circuit, the very circuit in which Cablevision is controlling law and the circuit in...
Aereo, Antenna Farms and Copyright Law: Creative Destruction Comes to Broadcast TV (Part 2)
Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. - Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903 __________________ Click here to see Part 1 of this series of posts. In part 1 of this series I described how Aereo's technology allows users to watch, record and access broadcast TV over the Internet. At the heart of this system is the use of a set of dime-sized antennas assigned to each subscriber, short buffering in RAM for retransmission and the creation of a...
Aereo, Antenna Farms and Copyright Law: Creative Destruction Comes to Broadcast TV (Part 1)
Whenever a copyright law is to be made or altered, then the idiots assemble. - Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903 ______________________ Aereo is coming to Boston, and to 20 other cities before the end of the year. Aereo is a company that has developed a system that captures over-the-air television (broadcast TV) and retransmits it to subscribers over the Internet. Subscribers are able to watch broadcast TV on their computers, tablets and smart phones. Even better, Aereo acts as a remote digital...
Does Second Circuit Decision Determine Copyright Legality of Aereo “Antenna-Farm” System Nationwide?
Aereo captures over-the-air television broadcasts and streams them to Aereo subscribers over the Internet. While the broadcasters claim this is copyright infringement (unauthorized public performance), Aereo has created an "antenna-farm" system designed to avoid allegations that its rebroadcast is a public performance under U.S. copyright law. CBS Broadcasting and other broadcasters brought suit for copyright infringement in federal court in New York. However, Aereo convinced both the federal...
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