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
Flo & Eddie v. Sirius XM – The Other Shoe Drops on the East Coast
On October 22nd I wrote a detailed post discussing Flo & Eddie's (owner of the Turtles' pre-1972 sound recordings) suit against Sirius XM, and specifically the holding of a California federal district court that Sirius's satellite radio broadcast and webcasting of these recordings was subject to a claim under California state law. (See The Kerfuffle Over Copyrights in Pre-1972 Sound Recordings). As I noted in that post, when sound recordings were added to the federal Copyright Act in 1972...
The Music Licensing Marketplace is Not for the Faint of Heart
Over the last 100 years the musical licensing business has evolved into a complicated system! This is a consequence of the evolution of technology, business practices and copyright laws. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I've been meaning to post this attempt by the U.S. Copyright Office to create a graphic that illustrates how music licensing operates. The copyright office published this graphic earlier this year, as part of its Musical Licensing Study - one of three active policy...
EU and UK Liberalize Access to Orphan Works – When Will the U.S. Catch Up?
One of the thorniest issues under the present U.S. copyright system is the law's failure to accommodate the problem of "orphan works" - works whose owners can't be identified or located. In many cases copyright holders have died, gone out of business or simply stopped caring. This makes it difficult or impossible to obtain terms for the use of works that likely represent the majority of 20th century cultural artifacts, including songs, pictures, films, books, magazines and newspapers. Mass...
Eleventh Circuit’s Fair Use Decision In Georgia State Leaves Uncertainty Over Use of Excerpts in University Course Packs
Academia is abuzz with reactions to the Eleventh Circuit's copyright fair use decision in Cambridge University Press v. Patton. This is, as one blogger described it, "the most important copyright and educational fair use case in recent memory." The decision highlights, yet again, the truth behind Professor Nimmer's observations that fair use is said to be "the most troublesome [area] in the whole of copyright law" and has been called "so flexible as virtually to defy definition." At issue...
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