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
Anderson v. TikTok: A Potential Sea Change for § 230 Immunity
In late August the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals released a far reaching decision, holding that § 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) did not provide a safe harbor for the social media company TikTok when its algorithms recommended and promoted a video which allegedly led a minor to accidentally kill herself. Anderson v. TikTok (3rd Cir. Aug. 27, 2024). Introduction First, a brief reminder - § 230, which was enacted in 1996, has been the guardian angel of internet platform...
Copyright And The Challenge of Large Language Models (Part 1)
“AI models are what’s known in computer science as black boxes: You can see what goes in and what comes out; what happens in between is a mystery." Trust but Verify: Peeking Inside the “Black Box” of Machine Learning In December 2023, The New York Times filed a landmark lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement. This case, along with a number of similar cases filed against AI companies, brings to the forefront a fundamental challenge in applying traditional...
Missed Deadline Leads to Dismissal of the Case
Being a litigation attorney can be a scary business. You’re constantly thinking about how to organize the facts to fit your theory of the case, what legal precedent you may have overlooked, discovery, trial preparation and much, much more. With all that pressure it’s not surprising that lawyers make mistakes, and one of the scariest things in litigation practice is the risk of missing a deadline. Depending on a lawyer’s caseload it may be difficult to keep track of deadlines. There are...
Secondary Liability and Sony v. Cox
Copyright secondary liability can be difficult to wrap your head around. This judge-made copyright doctrine allows copyright owners to seek damages from organizations that do not themselves engage in copyright infringement, but rather facilitate the infringing behavior of others. Often the target of these cases are internet service providers, or “ISPs.” Secondary liability has three separate prongs, “contributory” and “vicarious” infringement, and "inducement." The third prong - inducement -...
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