Hiring an outside Web designer can be an efficient and effective way of ensuring a high-quality Web site for a company. However, when the relationship with the designer ends, the question of who owns the copyright in the Web site can lead to contentious and costly litigation.

Features

News about lawyers and law firms in the franchising arena.

Features

Highlights of the latest franchising news from around the country.

Typically, the Court Watch column is dedicated to the presentation of recent notable judicial decisions in, as much as possible, a non-biased way. This month, I am going to break with that tradition, and while briefly reviewing several recent cases relating to arbitration in the franchising context, I will raise for consideration at the same time the question of the desirability of using arbitration as the preferred means of dispute resolution.

Features

It was no surprise to find an increased number of franchisors at the International Franchise Expo in Washington, DC, in April, and to find them determined to prosper even when the U.S. and world economies are struggling.

Features

People surfing the Internet on their own computers have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and a grand jury subpoena is needed for law enforcement to obtain identifying information, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled late last month in a case of first impression.

Features

The filing of a complaint by a Pennsylvania lawyer against the operators of an online virtual world, and last year's decision by a Pennsylvania federal district court in that case, <i>Bragg v. Linden Research Inc.</i>, has generated a great deal of interest in the media and among lawyers, as well as in the virtual world community. The attention has gone well beyond that which the decision would have garnered if it had not involved a virtual world and virtual property, given that it simply found an arbitration clause in a terms-of-service agreement to be unconscionable and therefore unenforceable. It is clear, however, that the case reflects the growth of real-life litigation over virtual-world property. Undoubtedly, as participation in virtual worlds increases, real-life lawsuits will be growing in number, too.

Features

The efforts of the entertainment industry to stem the infringement of sound recordings and motion pictures on the Internet have been widely reported. More than 20,000 infringement actions have been commenced against individuals, mostly in connection with their use of peer-to-peer ('P2P') services to share recordings with other P2P users. The legal basis for these actions is often misunderstood, however, by commentators ' and sometimes even by the courts. This article discusses several recent P2P cases that deal directly with a central element of most P2P cases, namely the allegation that users violate the plaintiffs' distribution rights under 17 U.S.C. '106 whenever they place a digital recording or video in a 'share' folder that other P2P users can access.