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
Google Wins (I mean settles) Google Book Search Copyright Suits
Google said Tuesday that it has agreed to pay $125 million to settle the copyright litigation brought by book authors and publishers over Google's project to digitize and show snippets of in-copyright books without the explicit permission of copyright owners. (See 1 2 3 for more on Google Book Search). $125 million? Peanuts to Google. Less than peanuts. We don't know all the terms and possible restrictions yet, but it sounds like this is a huge win for Google, which is now free to continue its...
Ohhhhh, Boston you're my home …..
So I'm shocked, just shocked, to learn that all of our state legislators may not be completely on the up-and-up. But, that's what the local feds seem to think. Eighteen-year state senator Diane Wilkerson was arrested by the FBI earlier today for allegedly taking bribes to help a nightclub secure a liquor license. Looks like Wilkerson was the subject of an elaborate sting- the lengthy FBI affidavit suggests that all of her bad behavior was video or audio recorded and photographed over an 18...
Judge Fabricant's Preliminary Injunction Decision in HRH v. Sheppard
Attached below is Judge Judith Fabricant's lengthy decision in Hilb Rogal & Hobbs v. Sheppard, decided by Judge Fabricant in the Suffolk Business Litigation Session early this year. To my knowledge, this decision and order became publicly available only recently. This restrictive covenant case is interesting in one unusual respect: it involves what some lawyers like to call "employee raiding" - a perjorative term that one sometimes hears when a large group of employees leaves to join a new...
"Legally Dead" (attorney Hal Kant's Business Card)
From the SF Chronicle's obit of Hal Kant, aka "the Czar", long-time attorney for the Grateful Dead: When Ben & Jerry's ice cream produced a new flavor, Cherry Garcia, in the early '90s, McNally wrote in his book, the company did so without even discussing the idea with Garcia. Although Garcia was unconcerned when it was first brought to his attention - "At least they're not naming a motor oil after me, man," he said - Mr. Kant convinced him that the issue should be addressed. As recounted...
11th Circuit: Courts Lack Jurisdiction Over Declaratory Judgment Action for Noninfringement of Copyright, Where Defendant's Work Not Registered
The 11th Circuit has ruled on a somewhat obscure but interesting issue of federal jurisdiction in copyright cases. The Declaratory Judgment Act allows one who has been threatened with a suit to file suit first, and ask for a "declaration" of non-liability. In other words, the declaratory judgment makes one who fears becoming a defendant the procedural plaintiff. The roles of "plaintiff" and "defendant" are reversed, but the underlying issue remains the same. Declaratory judgment is simply a...
Using Justia.com and RSS to Follow a Case in Federal Court
Assume you're interested in Jones Day v. Blockshopper, pending in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Go to Justia.com and click on the link US District Courts' civil case filings. You can search for the docket of any federal district court case to find the case in Justia. Justia follows the Jones Day case here. If you click on that link and scroll down you'll see the docket entries for the case (the last entry is #52 as of my writing of this post). You can click on the...
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Lee Gesmer