Intellectual Property Law

Using Contracts to Deal with Unknowns: Part 2 ??Unknown Unknowns? (Technology Law Letter #9)

Posted on October 23, 2009
In the previous issue of this newsletter, I discussed how to use contracts to protect against ?known unknowns,? those events and circumstances for which you know the general category of uncertainty, but not the outcome. This article covers ?unknown unknowns,? those events and circumstances that you cannot foresee...

Using Contracts to Deal with Unknowns: Part 1 ??Known Unknowns? (Technology Law Letter #8)

Posted on September 23, 2009
Issue #8 of Harry Boadwee’s Technology Law Letter is available.  This month’s lead article is: Using Contracts to Deal with Unknowns: Part 1 ??Known Unknowns.?  Next month, Part 2 will cover “Unknown Unknowns.” For a free subscription, please visit www...

Enter the Hyperwrap Agreement: Turning the Page in Online Contracts

Posted on September 11, 2009
Software and internet contracts for years have been created by means of “shrinkwrap,” “clickwrap” and even “browsewrap” agreements (although the enforceability of “browsewrap” agreements is somewhat doubtful)...

The Three Critical Negotiations in Any Contract (Technology Law Letter #7)

Posted on July 27, 2009
Issue #7 of Harry Boadwee’s Technology Law Letter is now available. The lead article is: The Three Critical Negotiations in Any Contract. For a free subscription, please visit www.BoadweeLaw.com/subscribe. I welcome your comments and suggestions!

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The Most Useful Contract Provision? (Technology Law Letter #6)

Posted on May 29, 2009
What’s the most useful clause in a contract? Find out my view in the latest edition of Harry Boadwee’s Technology Law Letter.  I also discuss the launch of my new online Technology Contracts Glossary. For a free subscription, please visit www...

Should You Sign Your Term Sheets? The Power of Commitment and Consistency (Technology Law Letter #5)

Posted on April 22, 2009
Issue #5 of Harry Boadwee’s Technology Law Letter is now available. The lead article is: Should You Sign Your Term Sheets?  The Power of Commitment and Consistency. For a free subscription, please visit www.BoadweeLaw.com/subscribe. I welcome your comments and suggestions!

Contract Provisions for Troubled Times: Myths and Realities of Bankruptcy (Technology Law Letter #4)

Posted on March 23, 2009
Issue #4 of Harry Boadwee?s Technology Law Letter is now available. The lead article is: Contract Provisions for Troubled Times: Part 4 - Myths and Realities of Bankruptcy.  For a free subscription, please visit www.BoadweeLaw.com/subscribe. I welcome your comments and suggestions!

Big Ideas in Business and Law

Posted on March 17, 2009
Here are some of the big ideas in business over the past 100 years, according to a short feature in BusinessWeek.  Many were fads, but most — even the early ones — have had staying power: Open Innovation - 2000 Reengineering - 19990 Outsourcing - 1989 Six Sigma - 1987 360-Degree Performance Reviews - 1973 Scenario Planning - 1967 Lean Manufacturing - [...

An Amazingly Critical Software Program for Super-Sized Datasets

Posted on March 17, 2009
How much would you pay for this software program: It determines what 300 million Yahoo users see each month, and helps Yahoo customize its home page content. Facebook uses it to manage 40 billion stored photographs. Microsoft changed its internal policies so that its team could develop on this software The software is Hadoop, named after a stuffed toy [...

Contract Provisions for Troubled Times - How Third Parties Can Assure Performance (Technology Law Letter #3)

Posted on February 25, 2009
Issue #3 of Harry Boadwee’s Technology Law Letter is now available. The lead article is: Contract Provisions for Troubled Times: Part 3 - How Third Parties Can Assure Performance. For a free subscription, please visit www.BoadweeLaw.com/subscribe...

Contract Provisions for Troubled Times: Making Sure the Other Party Performs (Technology Law Letter #2)

Posted on January 26, 2009
Issue #2 of Harry Boadwee’s Technology Law Letter is now available. The lead article is: Contract Provisions for Troubled Times: Part 2 - Making Sure the Other Party Performs. For a free subscription, please visit www.BoadweeLaw.com/subscribe. I welcome your comments and suggestions!

Annual Legal Checkup for Web Sites and Services

Posted on January 06, 2009
With the new year, you should review your web sites and offerings to see if they need any updates on the legal side. Consider this 6 point list.  These are the most common updates I see, not a complete list.  Your business may need more. Updating the site’s copyright notice to include the new year, if you [...

Lifting the Lid on Open Source Hardware

Posted on December 16, 2008
Clive Thompson describes how an Italian group applied open source principles to hardware for the Arduino microcontroller circuit board, a device that can monitor and respond to sensors, control small motors and the like.  Over 50,000 units have been sold worldwide since mass production began...

New wiki directory of Fortune 500 blogs and twitter accounts

Posted on November 20, 2008
Search Engine Land uncovers on a new wiki containing a directory of blogs and twitter accounts used by Fortune 500 companies. The Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki is located here.  It began as collaborative project between Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine and Ross Mayfield of Socialtext.

Just Launched: Harry Boadwee’s Technology Law Letter

Posted on November 14, 2008
I’ve just launched my newsletter, Harry Boadwee’s Technology Law Letter. The lead article is titled: Contract Provisions for Troubled Times: Part 1 - Getting Paid. To subscribe, please sign up on the form on my blog, or on the home page of my web site...

New Development in Location Privacy

Posted on October 12, 2008
This Washington Post article discusses a federal district court ruling last month, which apparently is the first to hold that the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause of criminal activity before seeking location-based cell phone records...

Ecommerce Glossary

Posted on October 11, 2008
Practical Ecommerce magazine has an online glossary of ecommerce terms: Practical eCommerce Glossary It offers a good selection of ecommerce blogs, too.

Using an API versus Open Source

Posted on October 10, 2008
Many businesses don?t consider the benefits of an Application Programming Interface (API) to generate attention for their software or web services, gain backing of other companies and even lower their own customer support costs.  I often raise this approach with clients since I advised Intuit on setting up its Intuit Developer Network program a few [...

A to Z Legal Issues for Ecommerce Websites

Posted on October 09, 2008
Here’s a good feature article on Entrepreneur.com, which gives the “A to Z” of legal issues to consider for ecommerce websites. It’s an amusing overview really, and isn’t intended as comprehensive.

Major Patent Holding Company Now Demanding Large Fees and Expanding in Asia

Posted on October 08, 2008
Intellectual Ventures, the patent holding company started by the former CTO of Microsoft, Nathan Myhrvold,  has begun obtaining payments from licensees in the $200 million to $400 million range, according to a recent front-page Wall Street Journal article (Tech Guru Riles the Industry by Seeking Huge Patent Fees, by Amol Sharma and Don Clark, September [...

Strategy at the Edge of Intellectual Property

Posted on April 03, 2008
Imagine working in an industry with no intellectual property protection at all.  Unlike the book, music, and high tech industries, you couldn't use the law to shut down an infringer who was ripping off your products.How would you stay in...

Data Scraping from Web Services

Posted on January 07, 2008
This month's Wired magazine has a perceptive article about so-called "data scraping" or "screen scraping" practices.  It discusses the practical aspects of data scraping (such as IP address banning or blocking as a practical remedy to prevent scraping), use of cease and desist letters, and use of properly-licensed web services application programming interfaces (API's) as a way to control such practices...

Silicon Valley Micro-Cultures and Industry Clusters

Posted on December 21, 2007
A New York Times article describes where the "niche neighborhoods" and industry clusters are located in Silicon Valley, with web design and online advertising centered in San Francisco, software in the Palo Alto area, and semiconductors, disk drives and and network equipment located in the south Bay near San Jose...

Consultants to Help Startups Expand Abroad

Posted on November 07, 2007
Generally, when a small U.S. client tells me that they wish to expand abroad, I think to myself, "that's going to be complicated, time-consuming and expensive."Recognizing the opportunities and challenges of globalization facing startups and other small businesses, the Wall Street Journal reports that consultants, such as High Street Partners of Annapolis, Maryland, now are advising them on how to expand abroad, such as dealing with tax issues, foreign employee benefits and local-currency transactions...

Business Tips for Providers of User-generated Content

Posted on November 01, 2007
Web sites and other online services containing content submitted by users (also known as user-generated content) are obviously a hot growth area.Not so obvious is the fact that these services depend on a little-known statute to protect their providers from legal liability for copyright infringement...

Short Introduction to Several California Laws that Affect Out-of-State and Foreign Businesses

Posted on October 30, 2007
I've just written and added a new article to my web site, Welcome to California: A Very Short Introduction to Several California Laws that Affect Out-of-State and Foreign Businesses (MS Word file).My resources page contains other articles that I've written.

Virtual Worlds Compared

Posted on August 07, 2007
TechCrunch posted a useful chart comparing all the existing virtual world services, such as Second Life.

The New Micro-Multinationals

Posted on July 16, 2007
A new breed of "micro-multinational" is emerging among the many Web 2.0 social networking startups, as described by The San Jose Mercury News.  A micro-multinational is "a small company that acts big by skillfully using the Internet and other technologies"...

Lawyer Wikis

Posted on June 15, 2007
A colleague of mine, Joel Riff of Riff & Bui, sent me the article Lawyers Collaborate with Wikis from Law.com.Wikis are online collaboration tools that enable multiple users to post articles and to edit one another's postings.  The most famous example is Wikipedia, an online Wiki-based encyclopedia that news reports say is now larger than proprietary encylcopedias, such as Encylopaedia Britannica...

Patent Factoids

Posted on June 14, 2007
Some factoids about patents:Typical cost to obtain a U.S. patent: $5,000 to $25,000.  Cost to invalidate a patent: Legal fees average $4.5 million in patent disputes where more than $25 million is at risk.Cost of obtaining a patent versus invalidating one: You do the math...

Size of the Intangible Economy

Posted on June 12, 2007
How large is the intangible economy in the U.S.?U.S. businesses invest about $1 trillion in intellectual property and other intangible assets, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Board.  That's as much as they invest in equipment and other tangible investments...

Tension between Quality Methodologies/Six Sigma and Innovation

Posted on June 08, 2007
Business Week ran an interesting cover story about the tensions between quality methodologies such as Six Sigma, and innovation and creativity.In sum, "while process excellence demands precision, consistency, and repetition, innovation calls for variation, failure and serendipity...

Re-enter the Title Office - for Copyrights

Posted on June 08, 2007
In the old west, the land title office represented law and order, and helped keep the peace among ranchers, farmers and miners with competing claims.  In the movie version of the old west, the land title office invariably burns down... and the drama begins...

Viacom versus Google/YouTube complaint available online

Posted on March 16, 2007
If you want to dig deeper, or "enjoy" reading legal briefs, Viacom's complaint against Google/YouTube described in the previous post is available online.

User-generated content at risk from Viacom lawsuit against YouTube

Posted on March 14, 2007
User-generated content took the Internet by storm last year - even as Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2006.  This content includes postings on forums, photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, and all sorts of media on MySpace and other social networking web sites...

Entrepreneurial Surge and Rise of the Part-Time Entrepreneur

Posted on February 26, 2007
Fortune Small Business reports that “we are in the midst of the largest entrepreneurial surge this country has ever seen. According to Small Business Administration projections, nearly 672,000 new companies with employees were created in 2005...