West Palm Beach, FL, resident Derrick Rahming dreamed of making it big with the hip-hop band Afro Rican and even formed a production company in the mid-1990s. These days millions have heard Rahming's group, even if they don't know it. A sample of his song 'Give It All You Got' jump-starts mega-star Fergie's hit 'Fergalicious' from her album The Duchess. Rahming recently filed a copyright-infringement suit, alleging he wrote the intro to the Billboard pop-chart topper in the late 1980s. He registered it with the U.S. Copyright Office and recorded it in its most popular form in 1995.

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It's time to start thinking about work for hire again. Technically, 2013 is the first year qualified recording artists may exercise the termination right that will result in reversion to them of the copyrights in their sound recordings from their record labels. There is no doubt about it: Whether referred to hyperbolically as a 'time bomb' or more benignly as a 'leak' in the record company's vaults, how the sound recording work-for-hire problem is resolved will have enormous financial and political impact on both record labels and recording artists.

The 2008 version is aimed at firms that do not have the computing power to install Amicus Attorney 7 (the successor to the discontinued Amicus Attorney X), which is a product that operates online. The main benefit to a product like Amicus Attorney 7 is that you can access your case data from any computer that has an Internet connection.

The 2006 amendments to the FRCP contain a host of technology-oriented standards and procedures. Accordingly, it is not surprising that the case law in the wake of these amendments reflects the unstoppable march and advancement of computer technology. This article illustrates some of the most important ways in which this technology has influenced judicial opinions regarding electronically stored information under the new rules.

Like the rest of the community, I make my annual pilgrimage to LegalTech New York to see old friends, gauge where technology has taken us and to gain insight on the direction in which we are headed. (I also go to replenish my swag. My favorite item is still the crisp two-dollar bill from Lex on Demand, but a few companies were making luggage tags from business cards, which I liked, and others were giving away flash drives, which I needed. And Kroll Ontrack Inc.'s 10-minute massage was a nice addition to the mix.)

Many people use free or consumer-class Voice over Internet Protocol ('VoIP') solutions and make long-distance calls for 'free.' But is this VoIP technology suitable for a law firm? Will it provide the business-class security and reliability expected in a phone system?

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Information about the advancement of lawyers in the patent profession.

Last month's installment discussed the necessity of analyzing whether experts are required, allowed, and qualified; Daubert considerations; and issues pertaining to 'skeletons in the closet.' The conclusion of this series addresses knowing why you hire an expert, whether an expert will be persuasive with the finder of fact, and agreements on scope of discovery.