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
A Discussion with Pam Woodall, Asian Economics Editor of The Economist
This interview, which can be accessed here, provides some fascinating observations on emerging markets and their impact on the world economy. Ms. Woodall notes that emerging markets now represent one-half of world output and world energy consumption. She states: The integration of China, India and other emerging economies are providing the biggest economic boost in world history, bigger than the industrial revolution. The first decade of 21st century will see the fastest growth ever in average...
So Much for Early Retirement
Courts. Judge Jack B. Weinstein is a legend in the federal judicial system. A district court judge from 1967 to 1993, he has been on "senior status" (but with a full case load) for the last 13 years. Yesterday, this 85 year old judge issued one of the longest decisions ever published: the 540 page decision certifying a class action in Schwab v. Philip Morris USA, a case alleging that smokers were defrauded into believing that "light" cigarettes were less dangerous than regular cigarettes. A...
Class Action Crazies Attack Wal-Mart
What were they thinking? David Fish at Collins Law, passed on this case: Acree et al v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Complaint in pdf format) This class action lawsuit alleges that Wal-Mart claims that music CDs it sells do not contain explicit language when in fact some of them do. Quoting from the suit: Wal-Mart violated its practice and policy by allowing CDs to be sold that contained explicit content but that did not contain an 'explicit content' or 'parental advisory' warning label. This worked...
Do Software Patents Discourage Innovation?
Patents. Over the last 20 years the conventional wisdom has been that patents are inimical to software innovation in the U.S. Many prominent software developers and industry luminaries have argued this position. Here is a link to a paper by Professor Robert Merges of the University of California Law School at Berkeley arguing the contrary view: that software patents have had a negligible impact, if any, on innovation in the industry. Here is the abstract: In the late 1980s and early 1990s,...
Mix One Cup of Law, a Tablespoon of People Magazine, and You Get …
Low Brow Lawyer Gossip! Yes, it astounds me that there can even be such a thing. When I graduated from law school all those many years ago, if you had been able to explain to me what the Internet would be, and what a blog would be, and told me that someday there would be a blog devoted solely to lawyer gossip (things like what law students have been selected as Supreme Court clerks, lawyer weddings, lawyer sex, lawyers coming out of the closet, summer associate faux pas, interview faux pas,...
The Sum of All Knowledge
Technology. Do you know what Wikipedia is? Did you know that this open source encyclopedia covers 1,391,807 topics (in the English version, as of this writing)? That it may be (or soon become) the greatest collaborative knowledge gathering effort the world has ever known? That it is the 17th most popular site on the Internet, receiving 14,000 hits per second? That you can find a topic in Wikipedia by simply entering "wiki" at the end of a Google search? (e.g., Lost TV show wiki)? If you're...
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