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When it comes to content management systems (or blogging platforms), WordPress is king. As of April of last year, it powered one out of every six websites on the Internet, or 60 million total. One can only imagine that the company’s dominance has increased since then. Of course, ubiquity attracts hacks. Earlier this week, a botnet went live that uses brute force to crack WordPress installations. A botnet is a series of computers that run malware....

When it comes to lawyers buying new computers, most subscribe to the age-old wisdom: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Not having a battery that can hold a charge can easily become a nightmare. Nowadays, batteries on computers, smartphones, and other devices are not easily replaceable by end-users. However, most manufacturers will offer battery replacement services which are usually a fraction of the cost of buying a new machine, and there are also third-party services that might be a little bit (or a lot) cheaper and more convenient....

You don’t have to be 21 to get a gun; 18-to-20-year-olds can legally possess and use handguns. Parents or guardians may gift handguns to 18-to-20-year-olds. The under-21 set can even purchase handguns through unlicensed, private sales. Federal law, however, provides that you must be 21 to purchase a gun from a federally-licensed dealer. In October, a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously upheld the handgun purchase age restriction, noting that Congress “deliberately adopted a calibrated, compromise approach....

Athletic apparel maker Adidas is suing a competitor for allegedly stepping on its trademark with a new line of sneakers. Germany-based Adidas, whose U.S. operations are headquartered in Portland, Ore., asserts trademark infringement by Costa Mesa, Calif.-based World Industries because of a design on a line of skate shoes, The Oregonian reports. World Industries’ “Major” skate shoe depicts an oversized “W,” much like the company’s other sneakers. But Adidas’ lawyers say the design crosses the line into infringement....

Campaign finance law is all the rage these days. Last month the Seventh Circuit enjoined a Wisconsin campaign finance law and the Ninth Circuit struck a Washington contribution cap, while the Montana Supreme Court potentially defied the U.S. Supreme Court decision last week by upholding state limits on corporate spending in political campaigns. (The challenged law in the Montana case, Western Tradition Partnership v. Attorney General, is strikingly similar the law SCOTUS struck in Citizens United....

Yesterday, a federal jury found that Apple’s iTunes 7 updates, made between 2006 and 2009, weren’t anticompetitive . The verdict caps 10 years of litigation alleging Apple locked other music providers out of its iPods. There’s been quite a bit of misreporting what’s actually going on in this case, so we decided to clarify some of the facts and issues at play. Content providers love DRM. They’re terrified that, because digital files can be replicated perfectly, once a user downloads a purchased file, he’ll share it with all of his friends....

It’s a touchy subject, but one worth broaching: Do business interests carry too much sway over federal judges? A recent panel discussion at New York University School of Law shed some light on this issue, and it seems that at least the Supreme Court appears to lean in favor of big business interests. The Supreme Court came under fire from some NYU panelists, who cited the Chamber of Commerce’s win rate during Chief Justice Roberts’s tenure....

In September, the Supreme Court agreed to address whether a law enforcement officer may obtain a nonconsensual and warrantless blood sample from a drunk driver under the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement based upon the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream. We say address, rather than decide, because the split opinions the Court issued today don’t quite make for a clear-cut decision that will help DUI defense attorneys....

As you probably know, SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” Many states have anti-SLAPP statutes, which allow defendants to dismiss a lawsuit on the grounds that it was filed to intimidate the defendant into ceasing certain protected conduct the plaintiff finds distasteful, like publishing a nasty review of their product. Fearing abuse of SLAPP suits, many states also allow a plaintiff to “SLAPP back” (boy are these legislators clever), wherein a plaintiff rebuts the defendant’s SLAPP claim by showing that the lawsuit is, indeed, meritorious....

In a product liability case, district court’s grant of summary judgment for the defendants is vacated and remanded where: 1) in regards to the plaintiff’s claims of negligence, breach of warranty, failure to warn, and fraudulent concealment, it is not whether the plaintiff had knowledge that she had sustained substantial physical harm, but when she had sufficient notice that her lung disease was caused by the defendants’ conduct, and material issue exists as to when the plaintiff had notice that the likely cause of her breathing problems was exposure to beryllium; 2) the claim for loss of consortium must be determined separately from the underlying claims; 3) defendants are not entitled to summary judgment on the sophisticated user defense as there are genuine issues of material fact about whether plaintiff’s employer, Raytheon, knew or reasonably should have known of the particular dangers posed by polishing beryllium metals and by exposing its workers to a particular hazardous concentrations; 4) record supports the conclusion that plaintiff worked with berryllium products manufactured by defendants; 5) there are genuine issues of material facts as to whether Raytheon was the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injury....

Did you know that according to Gallup, companies hire the wrong candidate about 82 percent of the time? In other words, companies tend to only get the right candidate less than twenty percent for each attempt at filling a vacant seat? You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that this is a bad way to do business. But sadly, the mechanism that results in choosing poor candidates is still the paradigm that most law firms use to hire attorneys....

When it comes to indemnification agreements for in-house lawyers, there are a number of considerations to take into account. There’s plenty of liability and litigation to keep in-house counsel relevant. But what are in-house attorneys to do when the tables turn on them? With a hat tip to Justin Comeaux’s piece for McGriff, Seibels & Williams, Inc., here are a few things to consider: These are just the tip of the iceberg....

The iPhone is for fun and the BlackBerry is for work. That has been the common perception for quite a while. The perception is in part due to a simple reality: most customers find that they prefer the design and simple interface of the iPhone over the BlackBerry. Now it seems that another shift is taking place. Apple has targeted the corporate market and BigLaw, and it seems to be working....

Today’s cautionary tale from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals should remind lawyers of the most important lesson in the law: Words have meaning. That means that if you’re going to file a lien on property in a bankruptcy proceeding, your affidavit better include the right language. Easy enough, right? Let’s turn to the facts in this case to find out how one litigant got this oh-so-wrong. Wave Energy was involved in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case....

A federal appeals court rejected a black man’s attempt to bring down Mississippi’s flag, which features a Confederate battle ensign and enshrines the state’s slave history. Carlos Moore, an attorney, claimed the Confederate emblem violated his rights to Equal Protection. But the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal said he did not have standing to sue, even though he may have felt the stigma from the vestige of slavery in Moore v....

The SEC engineered the perfect seed for future whistleblowers this week: a $22 million award for a Monsanto executive who reported improper accounting at the genetic engineering and pesticides agrocorp. The award is the second largest ever doled out by the agency. Monsanto agreed to settle for $80 million in February, after the SEC was told that the company’s accounting practices for its Roundup herbicides were being used to overstate earnings....

In a capital habeas matter, the denial of the habeas petition is affirmed where: 1) a previously undisclosed ballistics report did not exculpate petitioner, given its inconclusive language; 2) petitioner’s counsel did not perform ineffectively by failing to prevent him from representing himself, as he represented himself for only two days during the government’s presentation of its case, and his defense attorneys were heavily involved as standby counsel; and 3) petitioner waived his right to present expert mitigation evidence....

On February 18, the Fifth Circuit posted eleven opinions on bankruptcy, civil rights, criminal, employment, injury, interstate comity and securities issues on its site. In Archdiocese of Milwaukee Supporting Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., No. 08-11195, plaintiffs appealed from the denial of class certification in a securities fraud class action. The Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that, because plaintiff presented no evidence that a false, non-confirmatory positive statement by defendant caused a positive effect on the stock price, plaintiff had to show 1) that an alleged corrective disclosure causing the decrease in price was related to the false, nonconfirmatory positive statement made earlier, and 2) that it was more probable than not that it was this related corrective disclosure, and not any other unrelated negative statement, that caused the stock price decline....

Lawyers should really consider opening themselves up to being audited for their competence in handling e-discovery. Increasingly, e-discovery is becoming an integral part of being a litigator. Proficiency in e-discovery may even be key factor in whether clients decide to litigate. Many storied law firms used to cut their teeth on the long and laborious process known in the law as discovery – the examination of evidence. For larger and more monied clients this meant financial records – mountains of boxes of musty papers and wood-mites....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, aka the TPP, has been approved recently by 12 member states. If the published text of the treaty next is ratified by each state (a process that could take some time), then various important provisions will regulate trade between these member states. The member states are the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and Brunei....