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
The Messy Legalities of Trump’s Social Media Executive Order
On May 28, 2020 President Trump issued an “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship” (the Order). It takes aim at Twitter, Facebook and Google through the lens of 47 U.S. Code § 230 (Section 230), the federal law that allows internet platforms to host and moderate user created content free of liability under state law. The Order came just days after Twitter, for the first time, added warning labels and fact-checking to several of Trump’s tweets. A lot has already been written about...
Massachusetts Recognizes Contract Damages Based on Destruction of Researcher’s Life’s Work
[Disclosure: Kevin Peters and Jennifer Henricks, attorneys at Gesmer Updegrove LLP, represented Dr. Hlatky in the case discussed below] Contact law is complicated. It dates back centuries, and is mostly common law, meaning it evolves case-by-case in judicial opinions. There are thousands of cases, involving thousands of fact patterns, and it seems like there’s always room for one more variation. This was the case in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s (SJC) April 28, 2020 decision in...
A Renter Uses Your House to Film Porno Movies – Copyright Infringement?
I can’t let a decision on this case pass by, both because the facts are so bizarre and because the case is in my backyard, the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The plaintiff, Leah Bassett, owns a house on Martha’s Vineyard. She entered into a several-month long lease with Joshua Spafford. Spafford allowed the house to be used to film a number of pornographic movies. Ms. Bassett sued everyone involved, and one of her claims is copyright infringement. She claims that the...
Supreme Court Focuses on Standard of Review/Seventh Amendment Issue in Oracle v. Google
The odds of Oracle coming out on top in the Supreme Court appeal of Oracle v. Google just took a turn for the worse. On May 4, 2020 the following entry appeared on the Supreme Court docket in the long-pending Oracle v. Google copyright case: The parties are directed to file supplemental letter briefs addressing the appropriate standard of review for the second question presented, including but not limited to the implications of the Seventh Amendment, if any, on that standard. The briefs, not...
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