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
Second Circuit to Youtube (i.e., Google): Remanded for Trial
I'll be reading this decision, issued today, more carefully in the next day or two, but my first impression is that it's a win for supporters of the DMCA safe harbor statute based on various legal rulings, and a loss for Youtube based on the really dumb behavior of Youtube's founders. Of course, these guys didn't know, back in 2005, that seven years later the courts would be judging whether they were aware that they were hosting copyrighted videos. If they had known, they might not have...
Mass. Appeals Court Reverses an Unusual Trial Order in Non-Compete Case: Trillium v. Cheung
Here is an unusual spin on Massachusetts non-compete law. As best I can understand the facts (which require a bit of "between the lines" reading) Trillium sued Cheung, a former employee of Trillium. Cheung had, it appears, released an employee from a non-compete agreement without company approval. Trillium's suit asserted breach of fiduciary duty to the company. A trial ensued, but at the outset the judge observed that if the underlying non-compete agreement had not been enforceable the...
Two Recent Noncompete Cases From the Superior Court
Noncompete opinions from the Massachusetts Superior Court are few and far between, so the two decisions that have been issued so far this year -- one from Judge Peter Lauriat sitting in the Suffolk Business Litigation Section (BLS), the other from Judge Thomas R. Murtagh in Middlesex Cournty -- are worth noting. Both judges are respected judicial veterans, and each decision illustrates a legal principle basic to this controversial and often confusing area of law. The more note-worthy of the...
Redigi Case Poses A Novel Copyright Question on the Resale of Digital Audio Files – Is “Digital First Sale” Legal?
You know all those used music stores you used to love to go to back in the day when you bought music on CDs? You could browse through used CDs and buy them for less than retail. Maybe you still do (kudos to Deja Vu Records in Natick, Mass.). Of course, you can do the same thing online. The founders of Massachsetts-based Redigi figured, why can't we create a marketplace that will allow people to do the same thing with their digital music files? Or, as Redigi puts it: " Sell your old...
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