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
Supreme Court Grants Cert in Aereo Case – See My 4-Part Blog Post on the Case
On Friday the U.S. Supreme Court granted review in American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. I wrote a 4-part post on this case in the Spring of 2013. Part I of the series begins here. The series begins as follows: Aereo is a company that has developed a system that captures over-the-air television (broadcast TV) and retransmits it to subscribers over the Internet. Subscribers are able to watch broadcast TV on their computers, tablets and smart phones. Even better, Aereo acts as a...
MassLawBlog Update, Week Ending January 10, 2014
As the week was ending the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the broadcasters' appeal in the Aereo copyright case . . . . . . as well as Limelight Networks v. Akamai Technologies, which originated in federal court in Boston. The issue in Akamai is whether a company be found to have induced someone else to infringe on a patent, when neither one has directly infringed on patent rights. See my blog post on the CAFC's fractured en banc decision in this case. Aereo receives $34 million in...
MassLawBlog Updates, Week Ending January 3, 2014
As expected, The Authors Guild has filed a Notice of Appeal in the Google Books fair use copyright case Southern District of New York Judge Abrams has certified an interlocutory appeal to the Second Circuit to determine whether the DMCA safe-harbor provisions apply to pre-1972 sound recordings, and in addition "whether, under Viacom v. YouTube, a service provider's viewing of a user-generated video containing all or virtually all of a recognizable, copyrighted song may establish 'facts or...
Viacom v. YouTube, Mother of All DMCA Copyright Cases (part 1 of 2-part post)
[This is the first of what will be a two-part post on Viacom v. YouTube] [Update: Viacom v. Youtube was settled before the Second Circuit rendered its decision on the appeal discussed in this post] It seems unlikely that the drafters of the DMCA -- a law enacted in 1998, the same year Google was incorporated -- anticipated how difficult the courts would find application of this complex, near-5,000-word statute. There may be no better case to illustrate this than Viacom's long-running suit...
Guest Post: There Is No Substitute For Taking a Risk
“ In actual life, every great enterprise begins with and takes its first step forward in faith. ” — August Wilhelm von Schlegel ____________________ Now that Christmas is over its time to start thinking about 2014, and that means New Year's resolutions. The guest post below was written by my partner Jonathan Draluck and published last month on Gesmer Updegrove LLP's BostInno channel. Jonathan didn't write this with New Year's resolutions in mind, but it struck me as inspirational as we...
Crouch Quoting Chisum on CLS Bank
I can't resist quoting Dennis Crouch, quoting Don Chisum, on the the Supreme Court's pending review of the CLS Bank case: The Supreme Court often intervenes to resolve splits among the various courts of appeal. Here a split exists within a circuit that the circuit itself is unable to resolve. The circuit judges' varying interpretations of a body of recent and not-so-recent Supreme Court precedent riddled with fuzzy language and inconsistent results caused the split. Now, the Court has the...
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