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
California Court Refuses to Dismiss Craiglist’s Data Scraping Case Against 3Taps
Yet another "data scraping" case is percolating in the Northern District of California. Craigslist has sued the online aggregator 3Taps, Inc. (and others), claiming that they illegally copied Craigslist's classified apartment listings. In effect, 3Taps was attempting to disintermediate Craigslist—to insert itself between Craigslist and its users. 3Taps filed a motion to dismiss the multiple claims asserted in the suit, most of which was denied in the decision linked below. Of particular...
New York State Court Blows a Hole in the DMCA Safe Harbors for Pre-1972 Sound Recordings
The recording companies have consistently maintained that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) notice-and-takedown regime does not apply to pre-1972 works. However, the law on this arcane issue has been scarce. In Capital Records v. MP3tunes (SDNY 2011), the court ruled that pre-1972 works were covered by the DMCA. After this decision the recording companies decided to make their argument in state court. Their strategy paid off - the New York State intermediate appellate court (the...
Second Circuit Copyright Decision Vindicates Richard Prince’s “Appropriation Art”
Assume I were to take a well-known, in-copyright work of art, modify it in a variety of ways and publish the results as a coffee table book. To make this thought experiment easy, assume that the Statute of Liberty is covered by a U.S. copyright registration today—in fact, the Statue of Liberty was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in 1876, but its registration has long-since expired. Assume I took 30 photographs of the Statue and published my book with the images modified in various...
What Happens When You Get A Federal District Court Judge Really, Really Mad In a Civil Case
I haven't written a post that falls in the "what were they thinking" category for quite a while, but you don't see this very often. In Angiodynamics v. Biolitec AG Massachusetts federal district court judge Michael Ponsor (pictured left) entered a preliminary injunction forbidding the defendant from entering into a merger with its German subsidiary corporation, so as not to put the company's assets outside the reach of the plaintiff. In addition to corporate defendants, the corporate...
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