Features
Patents and Open Source Software: New Issues Raised in the GNU General Public License v3.0
Version 3.0 of the GPL, published on June 29, 2007, contains several new provisions regarding patents prompted by a recent agreement between Microsoft and Novell.
Features
Technology in Marketing: Using the Web
The legal industry hasn't been known to be the most innovative industry when it comes to cutting-edge interactive marketing. But a handful of firms are challenging that assumption.
Features
New NJ Law Allows Pulling Plug on Sex Offenders' Access to Internet
Legislation signed last month will allow New Jersey judges to restrict Internet access for convicted sex offenders and make it easier for law enforcement to monitor their online activity.
Features
Settlement Reached Via e-Mail Is Upheld
A recent Massachusetts Appeals Court ruling enforcing an e-mail settlement agreement of a contractual dispute is a reminder to lawyers that e-mail settlements carry the same weight as deals on paper.
Features
Ownership of e-Mail Is Not Clear
In the current litigious environment, what happens when an employee sends personal, allegedly confidential communications from work to his or her attorney or spouse? Can the employer lawfully access those e-mails, or do the attorney-client and marital privileges prohibit the employer from doing so? In answering this question, the key inquiry is always whether the employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the e-mails at issue.
Features
Special Report on e-Discovery: Making e-Discovery Cost-Effective for Smaller Companies
In the days of only paper documents, smaller companies could afford to wait until they became involved in a lawsuit to worry about pre-trial discovery, but today's reliance on digital information makes that a risky and unnecessarily expensive strategy.
Features
Sarbanes-Oxley and Open Source
If you use software and work for or with a company subject to Sarbanes-Oxley ('SOX'), then 2007 was an interesting year for you. How interesting? I'll raise some issues arising from the intersection of the topic of software use and SOX from last year to help you keep to a minimum the risk that 2008 will be an interesting year in some very bad ways.
Features
German Data Retention Law Takes Effect
The controversial German draft bill designed to amend legislation on communications surveillance and other secret investigation measures, and to implement the European Directive 2006/24/EC ' which was set to introduce mandatory retention of communications traffic data ' went into effect on January 1.
Features
Suit Seeks Share Of Profits from 'Jersey Boys'
In the months before his death from cancer in 1991, Beaumont, TX, lawyer Rex Conrad Woodard helped Thomas Gaetano DeVito, an original member of the pop group the Four Seasons, write an autobiographical book, Woodard's widow alleges. Woodard died before the book could be published. Now, with the work allegedly partly the basis for the hit Broadway musical 'Jersey Boys,' Woodard's widow has sued DeVito for a share of income stemming from the work.
Features
<b>Decision of Note: </b>Audit Clause Sinks Allman Brothers' Royalty Claims
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York decided that a breach-of-contract suit by the Allman Brothers Band (ABB) alleging royalty underpayments from Jan. 1, 2000 through Dec. 31, 2003, was barred by the limitations provision of the band's recording agreement.
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