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
Try Not to Use “Defalcation” in Your Employment Agreements
Few things anger employers more than learning that an employee who has been terminated has, before leaving, copied confidential documents. Courts often view this as an equitable justification for enforcing a covenant not to compete that might otherwise be "on the line" legally - maybe enforceable, maybe not. But what if an employee copies confidential documents and does nothing with them? In other words, doesn't give them to a competitor or use them in a way harmful to the employer? If the...
Sotomayor, Kagan ….?
I'm not a constitutional law expert, but I can't help but picture this scenario. The senate refuses to schedule confirmation hearings for an Obama Supreme Court nominee. Obama does the natural thing - he sues the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, to compel him to hold hearings. The case quickly reaches the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which rules one way or the other. The case is appealed to the Supreme Court, which ties 4-4 along conservative/liberal lines. As...
CopyrightX Meets Sony, DMCA
I'm privileged to be a CopyrightX teaching fellow this year, and this week CopyrightX met the real world - in the form of an encounter with Sony Music and the DMCA. Professor William Fisher's CopyrightX lecture 3.3, The Subject Matter of Copyright: Music, contains audio clips of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower played by Dylan, Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn. The course is making the point, with musical illustrations, that U.S. copyright law allows cover versions, so long as the artist...
Massachusetts SJC Holds No Ethical Violation Based on Patent “Subject Matter Conflict”
If a patent lawyer represents separate clients applying for patents involving the same subject matter, has she violated her ethical responsibility to either client? On December 23, 2015, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court became one of the first state courts to address this issue. Maling v. Finnegan Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP. The central issue in this case was whether the simultaneous representation of clients competing for patents in the same technology area -- 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