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
Cloud Computing – The "Next Big Thing"?
Here is a link to the slides used by Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger (Chairman Emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology) in his talk entitled Cloud Computing and the Coming IT Cambrian Explosion. This was presented at Xconomy's Cloud Computing event in Cambridge in June. While there is no audio, I think the slides communicate the message loud and clear. A favorite expression of mine is "important if true." On these predictions, I will say "important if prescient."
Judge Young on Employee Breach of Fiduciary Duty Claims, Interference With Contract and Pleading
U.S. District Court Judge William Young's recent decision in Talentburst, Inc. v. Collabera, Inc. is worth study. Talentburst is the former employer of Raj Pallerla. While employed by Talentburst, Pallerla signed a noncompete agreement with Talentburst. He then resigned and went to work for Collabera, Inc. For ease of reading I'll refer to these three parties as Former Employer, New Employer and Employee. When the Former Employer discovered that its Employee had gone to work for New Employer,...
Jacobsen v. Katzer
"Trust me, this is huge." Larry Lessig My partner Andy Updegrove has written a post discussing Jacobsen v. Katzer. In a nutshell, theCAFC upheld an open source copyright license, pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. As Andy discusses, this is an important decision for the open source movement. Update: Here is a link to a thoughtful post discussing whether this decision might have the unexpected effect of tipping the scales (in favor of licensors) on the legal enforceability of...
Study: If You Go to Trial, Odds Are You're Making a Mistake
Litigation takes the place of sex in middle age. Gore Vidal I wrote in some detail almost two years ago about how trials can be very bad for clients. In the linked article I wrote: Sadly, too many lawyers (you hear their ads on the radio and see them in the legal journals - "courtroom lawyers," "trial lawyers") are often as willing to take their clients to trial as generals are to commit their troops to battle. Now, a study reported in the New York Times seems to find empirical confirmation...
Andy Updegrove on Appeals in the OOXML Standards Battle
If my partner Andy Updegrove (he's the one on the right) is not the most knowledgeable lawyer on the planet about ODF/OOXML standard adoption issues (1,2,3), I would be more than a little surprised. Here is a Q & A with Andy that Redmond Developer News has published, where he discusses the ongoing appeals process related to these standards. A link to the article on scribd.com is below, and here is a link to the article online. If you know absolutely nothing about this controversy, click...
Bill Patry: End of Blog
In January 2007 I wrote: Bill Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel at Google (how's that for a great job), emailed me and asked me to mention the publication of his new copyright treatise, Patry on Copyright. I like the fact that Mr. Patry said this about his 5,800-plus page, $1500 treatise: " The book is also chock full of wikipedia references, anecdotes, riffs on logic, congitive linguistics, etc. It is many books in one." Although I haven't seen this treatise yet, I hope that it is a change from...
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