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
CAFC to Patent Applicant: "Read Our Lips – We Really Don't Like Business Method Patents"
In In re Lewis Ferguson, a March 6, 2009 decision from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the applicant sought to patent "a marketing paradigm for bringing products to market." After the application was denied by the various levels of the Patent Office bureaucracy for lack of patentable subject matter, the applicant appealed. The CAFC court quoted this claim from the application as an example: A paradigm for marketing software, comprising: a marketing company that markets software...
Judge Posner is Not Afraid to Use the "D" Word
The redoubtable Seventh Circuit Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner ("the most cited legal scholar of all time"; "probably the greatest living American jurist"), isn't afraid to call it as he sees it, and given Posner's brains, experience, and economic cred as an antitrust expert, he may be more credible than your average, run-of-the-mill economist ("economists exist to make astrologers look good"). In Posner's newest book, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent Into...
Jerry Spence On the Art of Cross Examination
Judge Stearns: No Market Power, No Illegal Tying
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns has issued a summary judgment decision dismissing AVX Corp.'s claims of an an antitrust violation by Cabot Corporation, based on allegations of illegal tying by Cabot. A tying arrangement is where a seller says, "I'll sell you product A, but only if you also buy product B." Product B is said to be "tied" to product A, the "tying product." A little thought and common sense would cause even an economist to conclude that if the seller doesn't have...
Not Every Great Idea Is a Trade Secret
You have a brainstorm: there is a market for dumpster rentals, and what better place to make the rentals than The Home Depot? You go to Home Depot and have it sign a non-disclosure agreement before you disclose this idea to it. You disclose the dumpster idea to Home Depot executives, but after much discussion and a great deal of back and forth over several years with many Home Depot employees, Home Depot turns you down. The next thing you know, Home Depot is renting dumpsters, using a business...
Key Legal Issues Involving Downsizing and Corporate Officers in Troubled Companies
While I shy away from posting PowerPoint outlines on this blog, the materials from two talks that my partner Sean Gilligan recently gave to attorneys in our firm are sufficiently comprehensive as to be an exception. Both outlines are on scribd.com, and are embedded below: Issues Facing Officers and Directors in Financially Troubled Companies Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work Business review culture Key Issues for Corporations Facing Downsizing, Insolvency or Liquidation...
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