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
Arbitration War Stories (first)
“The thing to fear is not the law, but the judge” Russian Proverb I’ve been arbitrating legal disputes since the early 2000s. Here is the first of a couple of anecdotes I'll share. I am referring here to my experience as the arbitrator, not an attorney arguing a case before an arbitrator. My cases have varied enormously, from huge multimillion dollar disputes to relatively small cases involving under a hundred thousand dollars. You might think that when I look back on these cases I have...
Will the Supreme Court Decide Oracle v. Google on a Technicality?
Will the Supreme Court dodge the thorny copyright infringement issues in the long-running (ten year) Oracle v. Google case on a technicality? The case was originally scheduled to be argued in March 2020, but after Covid-19 it was deferred to the 2020-21 term. Then, on May 4, 2020 the Court ordered the parties to file supplemental briefs: "The parties are directed to file supplemental letter briefs addressing the appropriate standard of review for the second question presented, including but...
Seeking to Capitalize on Booking.com, Kevin Kickstarter Seeks Advice From Attorney
(Bill Hilton, a partner at my firm, co-authored this post with me.) On June 30, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the addition of “.com” to a generic term has the potential to create a protectable trademark. In so ruling the Court rejected the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s “nearly per se rule” that when a generic term is combined with a generic top-level domain the resulting combination is generic. The background of this case is discussed in detail in an earlier post,...
Is the Internet Archive’s “National Emergency Library” Copyright Infringement or Fair Use?
After the Internet Archive launched a “National Emergency Library” the copyright community held its collective breath, waiting to see if the authors and publishers affected would tolerate it, or challenge it in court. Now we have the answer. On June 1, 2020, four major publishers — Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House — filed a copyright infringement suit against the Archive. Background. In late March 2020, in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, the Internet Archive opened a...
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