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
Boring Lawsuit We Missed the First Time Around ….
How many residential driveways are there in the USA? I have no idea, but I would estimate tens of millions. So it figures that someone whose driveway was videotaped by Google and put on the Internet for all to view (!?) on Google Street View would sue Google for invasion of privacy and trespass. Copy of opinion here. Link to the Boring's home on Google Maps here. My theory: these people actually crave attention for their property, and what better way to get it, than this? But then, I am...
Oh, Sweet Irony, How Thou Doest Tease Me
Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner issued an order permitting the webcast of a scheduled in-court motion hearing in the RIAA/Tenenbaum copyright downloading case. The RIAA challenged the order, arguing that a federal rule prohibits the webcast. Here is yesterday's audio of the First Circuit oral argument, with Harvard Law Prof. Charles Nesson arguing for Tenenbaum.
"Copyright in the Age of YouTube"
Great article by Steven Seidenberg in the February 2009 ABA Journal on the legal tensions between user-generated content sites (UGC, in the lingo) and the content owners under the "notice and take down" regime established by the DMCA. Interesting fact from the article: On YouTube alone ten hours of video content are put online every minute of every day, more than 250,000 clips per day. Cases and sites mentioned in the article: Lenz v. Universal Music Corp Io Group, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc....
DOJ to Senator Ted Stevens: “We Deeply Regret That This Has Occurred”
It's not often that the U.S. Department of Justice prosecutes a sitting U.S. Senator, obtains a conviction at trial, and then concludes it has no choice but to voluntarily dismiss the charges and let the former defendant walk free, totally vindicated. But that's what happened in United States v. Ted Stevens, the government's case against the longest-serving Republican in the Senate’s history. If this has ever happened before in the United States, I'm unaware of it. To quote from today's New...
Podcast Interview of Professor Charles Nesson: Why Statutory Damages Under the Copyright Law are Unconstitutional in the Tenenbaum Case
As everyone in the copyright law community knows by now, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson, and a team of HLS students, are defending Joel Tenenbaum in an RIAA action. Nesson's primary argument is that the copyright statute's statutory (aka punitive) damages of as much as $150,000 per infringement is unconstitutional, least as applied to Tenenbaum who downloaded seven songs for personal use, not profit. Over $1 million in damages ($150,000 x 7) seems a bit much for such a violation,...
Whither Antitrust?
A new administration often means a new approach to federal agency enforcement of the antitrust laws. And, a shift from Republican to Democrat often means more aggressive enforcement by the DOJ and FTC. The business and legal communities want to know, what can we expect? James W. Lowe and Thomas Mueller of Wilmer Hale attempt to answer some of these questions in their article Whither US Antitrust?, published in the March 2009 issue of the Global Competition Review.
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