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
Baker v. Goldman Sachs – The Business Deal From Hell
An interesting "David v. Goliath" jury trial is scheduled to begin in Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris's Boston courtroom this week. The case has received a fair amount of press coverage, but not nearly enough in my opinion. (Steven Syre Boston Globe column today, July 2012 NYT article). The events in Baker v. Goldman Sachs date back to the heady days of the dotcom era. In short, James and Janet Baker (pictured here) spent much of their careers pioneering speech recognition...
Repeat After Me: Competitors Cannot Agree Not to Hire Each Others Employees
Employee non-compete agreements are unenforceable under California statutory law, but that hasn't stopped many California tech companies from finding a back-room work-around. In October 2010 I wrote a short post discussing the FTC's complaint that a number of California companies had illegally agreed not to solicit each others employees - so-called "no-poach" agreements. (Apple, Google, Have You No Shame? Really!). Now, two years later, the DOJ has filed a suit against eBay which, the suit...
District of Massachusetts Case Shows Challenges in Software Development Litigation
Custom software development agreements that go awry and end up in litigation are notoriously difficult cases. The reasons for this (to name just a few) are the finger-pointing ("your fault, no yours"), the complexity, ambiguity or incompleteness of the functional/technical specifications, the presence of third-party developers or hardware vendors (who can also be blamed), and the obscure, technical nature of the cases, which make them distasteful to judges and dull to juries. Massachusetts U.S...
Posting Your New Job Info on Facebook Is Not “Soliciting” Former Employer’s Customers
It's not often that a Massachusetts Superior Court decision gets national attention, but if you search for Invidia, LLC, v. DiFonzo (Mass. Super. Ct. Oct. 22, 2012) you'll see that legal blogs around the country have picked-up on this obscure case. Why? Because anything that involves the intersection of law and social media gets attention. In this case, the issue that attracted attention was whether a hairdresser employed by a beauty salon in Sudbury, Mass. "solicited" her former employer's...
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