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
Supreme Court Overrules CAFC In Limelight v. Akamai
In September 2012 I wrote a post titled Why Can’t We All Get Along? CAFC Fractures Over Divided Infringement. The post discussed an August 31, 2012 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ("CAFC") en banc decision in two cases consolidated on appeal, Akamai v. Limelight and McKesson v. Epic Systems (link). As I described in that post, the 11 judges on the CAFC, were unable to agree on whether patent infringement occurs when separate entities perform the steps of a patented method. Six of the...
CAFC Reverses Judge Alsup – Java API Declaring Code Held Copyrightable
On November 26, 2013 I wrote a post titled "Oracle v. Google: How Google Could Lose on Appeal" (link). After oral argument before the CAFC a couple of weeks later I wrote a follow-up post, "Oral Argument in Oracle v. Google: A Setback for Google?" (link). I thought I was being a bit paranoid on Google's behalf, but I was wrong - if anything, I was being too optimistic. The CAFC reversed California federal district court judge William Alsup, upholding almost every argument made by Oracle....
Ripoff Report Has a Fight on Its Hands In Massachusetts
Can a state court order assignment of a defamatory posting on Ripoff Report to a prevailing plaintiff? That may be the central question in Small Justice LLC, et al. v. Xcentric Ventures LLC, pending the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Here are the basic facts. A Boston attorney* was defamed by a litigation adversary on the Ripoff Report (a website owned by Xcentric Ventures). The former adversary party, Richard Dupont, claimed that the lawyer was a perjurer with “a...
Lexmark v. Static Control – 12 Years and Still Going Strong
Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. . . . Bleak House,...
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