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
Why Did Broadcasters Use a Local Affiliate to Challenge Aereo in Boston?
Why did a Boston affiliate of ABC file suit a major copyright infringement action against Aereo in Boston, rather than ABC itself? Or another major broadcaster, such as CBS, NBC or Fox? On May 15th, in a post titled "Does Second Circuit Decision Determine Copyright Legality of Aereo “Antenna-Farm” System Nationwide?", I discussed the fact that Aereo had filed a preemptive suit in the Southern District of New York. The suit asked the federal district court to enjoin the major broadcasters (ABC,...
U.S. v. Apple: Where Were the Lawyers?
All antitrust cases are tried twice – once before the appeal, and once after the appeal. anon __________________________ The district court decision in U.S. v. Apple presents about as clear a case of price fixing as one can imagine. Apple participated in a conspiracy with five of the “Big Six” publishers (an incestuous group based entirely in Manhattan) to raise prices for e-books above the $9.99 price charged by Amazon. This was not subtle stuff—it was conduct worthy of the classic 19th...
Oh, Did I Forget to Tell You That Was Confidential? Better Overkill Than Underkill
A lot of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) provide that if one party gives the other a document and expects it to be treated as confidential, the document must be marked "confidential." Or, if the confidential information is communicated orally, the party that wants to protect it must notify the receiving party in writing within a specified number of days. ("Hey, the stuff we told at our meeting on Monday relating to our fantastic new product idea? That's all confidential under our NDA"). This...
Supreme Court Decisions ChangeLegal Landscape for Employers
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Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink – Are You “Soliciting” in Violation of an Employee Non-Solicitation Agreement?
Two note-worthy decisions have emerged from AMD v. Feldstein, a trade secret case pending in federal district court in Massachusetts. At the heart of the case is the conduct of several AMD employees who left to work for Nvidia Corporation. Inexplicably, they copied and took with them huge amounts of AMD data, actions which earned them a preliminary injunction in the first of two opinions, dated May 15, 2013. However, in the May 15th decision Massachusetts federal district court judge Timothy...
Joel Tenenbaum Has Reached the End of the Line (Probably)
The recording industry's case against Joel Tenenbaum for downloading 30 copyrighted songs has almost certainly come to an end with yesterday's decision upholding the jury's copyright infringement verdict of $675,000, or $22,500 per song. This case—one of only two out of tens of thousands filed against downloaders to actually go to trial (the others settled or were dismissed on various technicalities)—has been through a trial, two appeals to the First Circuit and one appeal to the Supreme...
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