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
Capitol Records Bares Knuckles in Redigi Suit, Goes After Founders
It's a sad reality that when the record companies want to get serious, they sue not only companies that they claim have infringed their copyrights, but the owners of those companies. Capitol Records pursuit of Michael Robertson, despite the bankruptcy of MP3tunes, is a classic example. MP3tunes declared bankruptcy and shuttered its service, but Capitol Records (part of UMG), pursued Robertson individually, and obtained a $41 million verdict against him personally. Capitol is using the same...
Ninth Circuit Hands Oracle a Tough Choice in Oracle v. SAP Copyright Ruling
Oracle faces a tough call following the Ninth Circuit's August 29, 2014 decision in Oracle Corp. v. SAP AG. Should Oracle accept the $ 356.7 million in copyright damages the Ninth Circuit authorized on appeal, or roll the dice for a new trial, gambling that it can do better? I've written about this case before (see Oracle and SAP Avoid a Retrial, Go Directly to Appeal, in the Other “Tech Trial of the Century"). As I discussed in that September 2012 post, in 2010 Oracle won a record $1.3...
The U.S. Supreme Court IP Year in Review
[As initially published in the September 1, 2014 issue of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly] A lot has changed in the realm of intellectual property law following the record-breaking ten intellectual property cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2013 term. Highlights of the six unanimously decided patent cases include suits in which the Court narrowed the scope of patent protection for inventions implemented on computers, made it easier to invalidate a patent for indefiniteness, and made...
“Bingo-With-a-Computer” Patent Doesn’t Survive Alice
It would be difficult to find a more straightforward application of the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International (June 14, 2014) than the Federal Circuit's August 26th decision in Planet Bingo, LLC v. VKGS LLC (Fed. Cir. August 26, 2014) (non-precedential). While practitioners and observers of patent law seemed to agree that Alice didn't spell doom for software and business method patents, it was clear that it did mark the end for patents that do...
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