Features
Jonathan Bick
At low cost and widening availability, VoIP is common in business, and might be used at a greater volume and frequency among tech and e-commerce companies, thus making it a technology and a commodity to watch. Unfortunately, for consumer and businessperson alike, a concealed cost of VoIP service might be a user's privacy. That's because traditional telephone privacy is strictly sheltered by existing case law and statute, while VoIP, it could be argued, is unprotected in many instances.
Features
Luis Salazar
Bluetooth, the moniker of the popular wireless technology, is named after a 'Viking' king famous for having united several Scandinavian countries, at least temporarily. Bluetooth, however, was not a Viking in the popular sense ' he used cunning more often than violence to achieve his objectives. It is perhaps appropriate, then, and certainly no surprise that marketers ' e-commerce firms and their marketing reps and agents among them ' have begun using Bluetooth technologies to do some 'Viking' of their own. Bluetooth Marketing ' also called Bluespamming ' uses Bluetooth technology to reach nearby potential consumers and offer them coupons, downloads, and other product or service information.
Features
Stanley P. Jaskiewicz
Entrepreneurs have traditionally dreamed of creating family businesses that would last for generations. Certainly, everyone has seen the stickers and other marketing testifying to a firm's and its founding family's decades of service, and their stability and track record. But in today's constantly changing e-commerce world, a business often must reinvent itself several times in one generation, much less plan to last for several.
Features
Timothy M. Hansen
The offering of combined services and devices is a direct response to consumer demand for streamlined, one-stop, bundled convenience. Take me for instance: I held out for several months until my cell phone provider finally started selling Blackberries so I could get the e-mail push from work without having to carry two devices. This bundling concept is also emerging in the legal profession. Platforms such as LexisNexis Total Litigator and Westlaw Litigator, for example, which bundle services and features that previously had to be accessed independently, are rapidly gaining popularity. So, just how well does the bundling concept work?
Features
Brian Larsen
As most e-discovery vendors will happily tell you, 99% of all new business information is being created and stored electronically, and an estimated 60 billion e-mail messages are sent daily in the U.S. Sifting through all this data in a meaningful manner requires strategic thinking. On one hand, parties have an obligation ' and courts have created incentives ' to be fully forthcoming on electronic discovery requests. On the other hand, processing and reviewing data collected from hundreds of desktops and servers can become very expensive. During the e-discovery search process, even the most strategic keyword selections can leave a lot to be desired. Even case-specific terms may generate a lot of hits, but it may also produce more false positives than relevant material. Creating a strategic plan for data filtering through a well-researched selection of keywords and file types helps to ensure efficiencies in cost, time and resources, while generating fully forthcoming materials.
Features
Steven Salkin
A Minnesota woman was found guilty oif illegally downloading music onto her computer -- to the tune of $222,000, a jury decided in federal court in Duluth on Oct. 4.
Features
Andrew T. Spence, James T. Pinyerd, Guy R. Gosnell
As discussed in detail in this two-part series, the final rule places a number of restrictions on various aspects of patent practice. This first installment examines the final rule as it relates to continued examination filings.
Features
John J. Buchanan
No company, bricks-and-mortar or e-based, is immune to crisis ' so no company should be without some kind of plan to communicate in the midst of that crisis. Organizations with good plans in place will weather crises far better than those that have none ' or those whose principles believe that not communicating will insulate them in some way from the effects of the crisis.
Features
Jonathan Bick
It's an apparent contradiction, or maybe an irony, but it's a fact that e-commerce merchants, like their medieval predecessors, often use their own lex mercatoria, or merchant law, in lieu of traditional law. Online marketplace managers, like those who managed medieval fairs, regularly require participants to change their behavior or face banishment. Medieval merchants resolved difficulties in accord with notions of fair dealing rather than invoking a specific body of substantive principles. As an anachronistic consequently, e-commerce participants might find that the substantive law of merchants is applicable to e-commerce, and e-commerce counsel may, in some instances, want to recommend that clients take this tack.
Features
Stanley P. Jaskiewicz
For years, e-commerce writers have distinguished the 'bad, old bricks-and-mortar' world from the 'new and improved' e-commerce economy. But recently, the marketing, purchase and sale of real estate have all begun to join online.
