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
After Judge Zobel Slams Tenenbaum, Eighth Circuit Whacks Thomas-Rasset
In late August Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel refused to remit $675,000 in statutory copyright damages that a jury awarded (long ago, pre-appeal) against Joel Tenenbaum, and held that the award did not violate Tenenbaum's constitutional rights under the Due Process Clause. (Blog post on Tenenbaum here). Yesterday, in a case involving essentially identical issues, the 8th Circuit affirmed a $220,000 jury verdict against Jamie Thomas-Rasset. Ms. Thomas-Rasset has had a rough...
TomTom Unable to Preempt Suit In Texas By Seeking Declaratory Judgment in Massachusetts
As I've written before, getting sued for patent infringement in Texas (often the Eastern District, or "EdTX") is generally viewed as undesirable by corporate America. Apparently seeking to avoid this unpleasantness, TomTom, Inc. filed a suit in Massachusetts, asking the court to declare that it did not infringe several patents held by Norman IP Holdings, Inc., over which Norman had already sued TomTom in EdTX. As its name suggets, and as best I can determine, Norman is a non-practicing entity...
Why Can’t We All Get Along? CAFC Fractures Over Divided Infringement
". . . the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings . . ." East Coker, by T.S. Eliot __________ Congress enacts laws. The courts interpret and apply them in cases. Often, there is disagreement over what the words mean, and judges debate the meaning in published decisions. Judges on the same court may agree, disagree, dissent, concur, and form shifting majorities and minorities. Occasionally, congress will take notice and attempt to clarify a law by amendment. Sometimes, this only adds to...
First Circuit: Company’s Vague Contract Insufficient to Prevent Supplier From Competing
A contract between a company and its supplier states that the supplier shall not "develop any other product derived from or based on" the company's product. Can the company enforce this provision against the supplier when the supplier develops a product that does not appropriate any trade secrets or novel features of the company's product? Not according to a decision of the First Circuit issued on September 4th. Where the features of the product are well known in the art, and there has been...
Oracle and SAP Avoid a Retrial, Go Directly to Appeal, in the Other “Tech Trial of the Century”
Now that the patent trial of the century is on pause for a bit (Apple v. Samsung), it's time to catch up on the other tech trial of the century, Oracle v. SAP. Yes, it's difficult to keep track of all these tech trials of the century. I hope that 80 years from now the world remembers that we had the tech trials of the century back in 2010 and 2012.* *Oh, I almost forgot the other (the third) tech trial of the century, the copyright/patent trial between Oracle and Google earlier this year....
Apple v. Samsung Jury Verdict Form. Huh?
I've been meaning to post a link to the jury verdict form in the Apple v. Samsung patent case. Here it is, linked at the bottom of the post. And no, that's not some weird crossword puzzle on the left, it's a tiny section of the verdict form. If this isn't the most complex jury verdict form in American legal history, I can't imagine what is. The Verge did a nice job of dissecting the jury verdict form pre-verdict, and concluded that a decision on the approximately 700 decision points would "not...
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