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
Does Your Lawyer Have Emotional Intelligence?
“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser – in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man.” Abraham Lincoln. Does your lawyer have emotional intelligence? Or if you’re a lawyer, do you?* *Note: “Studies show that lawyers score high in intelligence but below average in emotional intelligence, and Ronda Muir, author of ‘Beyond...
Oracle v. Google: Will The Best Analogy Win?
Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home – Sigmund Freud One good analogy is worth three hours discussion – Dudley Field Malone Oracle v. Google, now before the Supreme Court, is a complicated case in more ways than one. The copyright law issues are difficult, but the case is made even more challenging by its subject matter, which involves highly technical and abstruse computer technology. Judges have a hard enough time applying copyright law to...
Does Genius Have an Illegal “Scraping” Case Against Google?
Genius Media Group Inc., the owner of the music lyric site genius.com has sued Google and LyricFind for “scraping” lyrics from the genius.com website. Two aspects of this new case (only a complaint so far) are interesting - the way that Genius established that Google was scraping, which is quite clever, and the basis for Genius’s legal claim which appears to be quite weak. Assume you have a work that you want to protect from copying but that you can’t copyright. You might be unable to use...
UBS May Be Liable Under 93A For IRA Beneficiary’s “Unsatisfactory Experience”
As we get older many of us own Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). These can hold money contributed directly during our working lives, or through a “rollover” from a 401K plan when we retire from a job. Either way, the money in IRA accounts (which in the U.S. totals more than $2.5 trillion), is held by financial institutions (such as Fidelity, Vanguard and Schwab) who act as custodians for this money. We rely on these custodians to transfer this money to our designated beneficiaries upon...
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