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
You Want to Enforce a Non-Compete? Bad Facts, Sir, Give Me Some Bad Facts!
What is the first thing a lawyer looks for when a client wants to enforce a non-compete agreement? What is the first thing a lawyer hopes not to find when a client is the subject of a non-competition demand letter or lawsuit? Bad facts. Did the employee take confidential information belonging to the former employer? Did the employee contact customers of the former employer and solicit them for the prospective employer before leaving the former employer? If the employee was an executive or...
Video Game Company Misreads Copyright Law, Infringes Tetris
Tetris. Popular? Perhaps the best video game yet created, with over 200 million copies sold. Mysterious? It was developed by a Russian programmer during the cold war. Scientific? Think tetrominos, not MMOGs. If you aren't familiar with this game you should (a) reexamine your life, and (b) check it out. But does copyright law protect it against a knock-off that uses not only the same "ideas" (tetromino shaped tiles falling from the top of the screen, that need to be moved/rotated to fit...
Fourth Circuit Upholds Copyright Damages Based on Sales Abroad Under Rarely Applied “Predicate Acts” Doctrine
It is a well-known principle of copyright law that the Copyright Act has no extraterritorial reach. For example, a U.S. copyright holder cannot bring suit for copyright infringement, in the U.S., against individuals or companies who reproduce and sell, outside the U.S., software, music CDs, DVDs or other copyright-protected works. What if, however, the initial infringement occurs in the United States, and the infringer distributes infringing copies outside the U.S.? For example, what if an...
Slides From Copyright/Trademark CLE
I've posted the slides from a CLE talk I gave on Wednesday, April 25th. Hopefully, the slides are informative standing alone. They address the very recent DMCA decisions by the 9th Circuit (Veoh) and 2nd Circuit (Youtube), the copyright "first sale" doctrine as applied to digital files in the Redigi case pending in SDNY, and recent trademark "keyword advertising" cases decided in the 4th and 9th Circuits (Rosetta Stone in the 4th Circuit, Network Automation and Louis Vuitton in the 9th)....
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