Features

Law firms are at great risk for financial impropriety. Funds can come up missing in any law firm, and the cause can be intentional theft that qualifies as fraud or embezzlement, or an unintentional mistake that shows poor judgment.

Highlights of the latest intellectual property cases from around the country.

Features

A recent federal district court award of $6.6 million in statutory damages to music publishers for the unlicensed use of song lyrics by the website LiveUniverse and its operator was hailed as the first of its type for owners of song lyrics, and thus a significant milestone for content owners in the digital era.

Features

The FTC closed its inquiry, requiring Google to license patents that are essential to the interoperability of electronic devices but securing minimal agreements on what many viewed as the heart of the case: Google's dominance in the search market.

Features

The Internet has changed immensely since its creation. What was once only accessible through a dial-up modem on a large desktop computer is now available wirelessly with the touch of a finger. Smartphones, tablets, e-readers and gaming systems have all entered the mix as the next generation of computers, and they have transformed our online experiences in a multitude of ways. As the number of mobile Internet-connected devices continues to increase, so will the traffic they generate to law firm websites.

Does the First Amendment protect what you "like" on Facebook? Obviously, Facebook, with its vested interest in shielding all forms of user expression, would argue it does. But now it is not alone in that belief.

Features

On Dec. 11, 2012, European Union Ministers in charge of competitiveness issues endorsed a legal package to create a Unitary Patent, which provides uniform legal protection in 25 European countries. On the same day, the Members of the European Parliament approved the European Union patent package including a Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court.

You don't need to devote hours every day to posting tweets and commenting on Facebook. But to get a better understanding of how social media works, you should spend some amount of time creating a Facebook page, Twitter account and LinkedIn connections and learn to communicate via text messaging as well as use whatever other Web tools your clients use.