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
Viacom Has Chutzpah (or Perhaps Bad Judgment) to Suggest That Second Circuit Reassign Its Case Against Youtube In Event of a Remand
"The thing to fear is not the law, but the judge.” - Russian Proverb _____________________________ Viacom has filed its opening brief in its second appeal in Viacom v. Youtube. This long-running copyright case is establishing important precedents in the interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).* *See this link for my most recent post on this long-runing case. In its current appeal Viacom argues that the trial court judge erred in granting Youtube summary judgment...
Massachusetts Attorney’s Innovative Attempt to Use Copyright Law to Remove Defamatory Material From “Ripoff Report” Unlikely To Succeed
An unusual copyright suit recently filed in federal court in Boston is worth a brief comment. Here are the facts. In July 2012 someone wrote an offensive, defamatory “complaint” about a Boston attorney on the website Ripoff Report. Because a federal statute (47 USC § 230) protects Ripoff Report from liability for defamatory user generated content (“UGC”), the lawyer could not force Ripoff Report to remove the defamation from the site.* However, he came up with a clever (but, as we shall see,...
Fourth Circuit Holds That Federal E-Sign Statute Covers Copyright Assignments
Copyright registration requirements can get quirky, and if they aren't handled properly can result in dismissal of a copyright infringement case (valid registration being a requirement before an infringement case can be filed). An invalid or defective registration can deep-six a copyright plaintiff's suit on a technicality. The Fourth Circuit addressed a number of issues associated with copyright registration in Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Inc. v. American Home Realty Network,...
Massachusetts Federal Judge Applies the CFAA Narrowly in AMD v. Feldstein
This week's internal report by MIT on its handling of the Aaron Swartz case may be an appropriate time to note that the sound and fury over the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (the "CFAA") is not limited to its use in criminal cases like the Swartz prosecution. The controversy extends to the use of this law in civil cases as well.* *The CFAA may be used as either a civil or a criminal law. However, the words of the statute must mean the same thing in each context. As the court noted in the case...
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