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
Joel Tenenbaum Has Reached the End of the Line (Probably)
The recording industry's case against Joel Tenenbaum for downloading 30 copyrighted songs has almost certainly come to an end with yesterday's decision upholding the jury's copyright infringement verdict of $675,000, or $22,500 per song. This case—one of only two out of tens of thousands filed against downloaders to actually go to trial (the others settled or were dismissed on various technicalities)—has been through a trial, two appeals to the First Circuit and one appeal to the Supreme...
Bringing an Antitrust Suit Alleging an Illegal “Agreement” is More Difficult Than You Think, But Not as Difficult as Massachusetts District Court Judge Stearns Made It
If you want to bring an antitrust suit based on an illegal agreement among competitors (say, a boycott), you face a possible Catch-22: you can't get the evidence you need to prove an illegal agreement until you file the suit (and conduct discovery), but you can't file an antitrust suit unless you are able to provide sufficient evidence of the agreement in your complaint. This is the problem the plaintiff faced in Evergreen Partnering Group v. Forrest, decided by the First Circuit on June 19th....
Aereo, Antenna Farms and Copyright Law: Creative Destruction Comes to Broadcast TV (Part 4)
"Streaming copyrighted works without permission would drastically change the industry, to plaintiffs' detriment. . . . The strength of [broadcasters'] negotiating platform and business model would decline. The quantity and quality of efforts put into creating television programming, retransmission and advertising revenues, distribution models and schedules — all would be adversely affected. These harms would extend to other copyright holders of television programming. Continued live...
Material Change In Employment Relationship Leaves Noncompete Agreement Unenforceable
My late May post on Rent-A-PC, Inc. v. Robert March, et al. discussed a Massachusetts federal district court case in which Judge O'Toole refused to issue a preliminary injunction enforcing noncompete provisions against two former employees of Rent-A-PC because their job responsibilities had substantially changed since their non-compete agreements had been signed. In a decision issued by a Massachusetts Superior Court Judge in May, the court refused to issue a preliminary injunction on the...
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