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
Repeat After Me: Competitors Cannot Agree Not to Hire Each Others Employees
Employee non-compete agreements are unenforceable under California statutory law, but that hasn't stopped many California tech companies from finding a back-room work-around. In October 2010 I wrote a short post discussing the FTC's complaint that a number of California companies had illegally agreed not to solicit each others employees - so-called "no-poach" agreements. (Apple, Google, Have You No Shame? Really!). Now, two years later, the DOJ has filed a suit against eBay which, the suit...
District of Massachusetts Case Shows Challenges in Software Development Litigation
Custom software development agreements that go awry and end up in litigation are notoriously difficult cases. The reasons for this (to name just a few) are the finger-pointing ("your fault, no yours"), the complexity, ambiguity or incompleteness of the functional/technical specifications, the presence of third-party developers or hardware vendors (who can also be blamed), and the obscure, technical nature of the cases, which make them distasteful to judges and dull to juries. Massachusetts U.S...
Posting Your New Job Info on Facebook Is Not “Soliciting” Former Employer’s Customers
It's not often that a Massachusetts Superior Court decision gets national attention, but if you search for Invidia, LLC, v. DiFonzo (Mass. Super. Ct. Oct. 22, 2012) you'll see that legal blogs around the country have picked-up on this obscure case. Why? Because anything that involves the intersection of law and social media gets attention. In this case, the issue that attracted attention was whether a hairdresser employed by a beauty salon in Sudbury, Mass. "solicited" her former employer's...
Sloppy Online Agreements Costs Plaintiff Its Breach of Contract and CFAA Claims
Last month I wrote a post titled "Online Agreements – Easy To Get Right, Easy To Get Wrong." In that post I discussed two cases in which the plaintiff had failed to take appropriate steps to necessary to impose terms and conditions on its customers. A recent case decided by the federal district court for the District of Pennsylvania provides yet another example of how sloppy online contracting can doom a claim based on an online agreement. The case, CollegeSource, Inc. v. AcademyOne, Inc.,...
Seventh Circuit: Embedding and Linking Is not Contributory Copyright Infringement
Before the Internet made file sharing ubiquitous, liability for "indirect" copyright infringement was something of a legal backwater.* Massive file sharing of audio, image and video files has changed that. Where a website actually hosts a copyrighted file uploaded by a user, the legal rights of the parties are relatively clear: the uploader (and subsequent downloaders) are liable for "direct" infringement. The legal rights of the website owner are governed by the Digital Millennium Copyright...
Massachusetts Quick Links – October 2012
Oriental Financial Group, Inc. v. Cooperativa De Ahorro y Crédito Oriental (1st Cir. October 18, 2012) — In this case the First Circuit adopts the trademark law "progressive encroachment doctrine," joining the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 11th circuits. The progressive encroachment doctrine may be used as an offensive countermeasure to the affirmative defense of laches (delay in brining suit) where the trademark owner can show that "(1) during the period of the delay the plaintiff could reasonably...
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