Is a Web Site's Look and Feel Protected?
In recent years, a growing debate has emerged over whether the overall look and feel of a Web site can be protected. To be sure, online content, videos, and other media are copyrightable, but the law remains unsettled when it comes to using trademark law to protect a site's distinctive interface and design elements. This article discusses trade dress generally, the issue of copyright preemption, and recent decisions that have wrestled with the issue of Web site trade dress infringement.
Case Briefs
Highlights of the latest insurance cases from around the country.
Grouping Language in NY After GE Footnote Number Three
After taking a closer look at <i>Appalachian Insurance Co. v. General Electric Co.</i>, 8 N.Y.3d 162 (2007), this article surveys four recent New York decisions that interpret "occurrence" definitions and grouping language in policies to address the number-of-occurrences issue.
The Duty to Defend and Indemnify the Ghosts of Mississippi
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi recently addressed whether an insurer's duty to defend and indemnify its insured under a claims-made policy for law enforcement wrongful actions covers allegations arising from the murder of two teenagers during civil rights unrest in 1964; the primary issues involved coverage in the presence of both covered and uncovered claims and the application of the known-loss exclusion.
Crowdsourcing the Law
The Internet's completely over, the musician once-again known as Prince declared this summer. If so, I am at a loss to explain the ongoing emergence of innovative Web sites such as Spindle Law, a new site that is reconfiguring the traditional legal treatise to make it better fit a "Web 2.0" world.
Accelerating Operational Effectiveness and Disaster Recovery with Riverbed
Like so many large Am Law 100 law firms with offices across the United States and around the world, our firm was facing challenges sharing and backing up data, and we wanted to strengthen our disaster recovery capabilities without compromising our operational excellence. Our challenge was that we had a complex legacy network connecting all the offices. At times, this resulted in slow data transfers, limiting our legal teams' opportunities to efficiently and effectively leverage interoffice resources.
Managing Section Breaks in Microsoft Word
While one can spend an entire training session covering Section Breaks, Headers/Footers, Page Numbering, etc. (and I highly recommend doing so), it can help to manage Section Breaks if you know a little about them to begin with.
Oh, Data, Where Art Thou?
The ability to convert capital expenditures to operating expenses, tax considerations and other cost-savings benefits are sending businesses to the cloud with glee, while the legal profession is lagging behind but getting the hint. As the evolution of security measures becomes more imperative, tales of international disagreement regarding security regulation make the location of a vendor's servers a question of paramount importance in selecting a cloud provider. For lawyers, this question of location is compounded by jurisdictional considerations.
