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Back when it first opened, Snow’s Clam Box was a popular place to eat. Visitors liked the food, the location, and the service. That was before the restaurant caught fire. In United States v. Saad, it turned out the owner torched the place for the insurance money. He appealed his arson conviction, but by then his goose was cooked. Bad Business Actually, the restaurant didn’t serve goose. Like most restaurants in Rhode Island, it served seafood....

In US v. Paige, No. 09-13067, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant’s conviction for permitting his minor child to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing child pornography, holding that 1) there was nothing irrational about Congress’s conclusion that failure to regulate the intrastate production of child pornography, by punishing parents who permitted their minor children to participate in the production of child pornography, would undermine its regulation of the interstate child pornography market; 2) the cameras used to produce, and the memory card used to store, the images of child pornography had traveled in interstate commerce; and 3) defendant’s separation of powers argument was foreclosed by binding precedent....

Move over pink brains, the new legal smarts are contained within circuit boards and transistors, not flesh – or so techno-futurists claim. Those same voices are now loudly predicting the integration of artificial intelligence into legal practice. Of course, machine intelligence is nothing new. Commentators have long said technology will replace lawyers and lawyers have long laughed at some claims – and billed for the time spent laughing. Yet, with AI advancements such as IBM’s Watson, more companies are expected to bring AI into their daily practice, and those companies will pressure their law firms to do the same, according to Legaltech News....

OK, reality check: All those headlines and stories claiming Dropbox was “hacked” contain a false statement and a misleading omission, making them technically false (consult your local rules of professional responsibility). Dropbox wasn’t hacked. That’s the false statement. According to Dropbox, the usernames and passwords posted on Pastebin were login credentials stolen from other services. The thieves then used those same credentials to attempt to log in to Dropbox accounts....

In 2010, over 20 members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang were indicted for conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and several other offenses. Five of the convicted Outlaws appealed their convictions, claiming they should have had been able to cross-examine government witnesses on their backgrounds. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions in the Outlaws’ RICO appeal this week, finding that the district court made a reasonable call on the questioning under Federal Rule of Evidence (FRE) 608....

New lawsuits related to the on-demand economy. For years, the ‘gig’ economy has been both lauded and decried by some as the new economic paradigm. It seems to have gotten people working again. But not without controversy. The latest company to feel the misclassification lawsuit hurricane is none other than Google. According to Reuters, Anna Coorey, a contract driver for Google Express, is poised to sue the search engine company for overtime pay and expenses, arguing that she should be classified as an employee, not a contractor....

In Golden & Zimmerman, LLC v. Domenech, No. 09-1534, the Fourth Circuit addressed plaintiffs’ claim that an answer to a “frequently asked question” in the “Federal Firearms Regulations Reference Guide 2005,” published by the ATF, was inconsistent with the Gun Control Act. The plaintiffs’ main contention was that the particular answer at issue in the reference guide prohibited the plaintiff, a North Carolina licensee, from selling guns at a Virginia gun show to a Virginia licensee for transfer to Virginia residents....

We’ve long been conflicted over the Evernote/OneNote choice. OneNote was there for us in our younger law school days, for note-taking, screen-shotting, website clipping, and outlining. Evernote arrived, and brought way better mobile apps, but also has a cap on syncing data for free customers. Then OneNote updated their mobile apps to close the gap, but didn’t have Mac OS X support. Then again, no data cap. They just added Mac OS X support....

In a murder-for-hire case that has all the hallmarks of a mafia series, the Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower district court’s ruling by denying a petition for review of habeas and essentially affirmed a contested application of the doctrine under AEDPA. The opinion is long, but the facts of this case are worth it. Ivan Teleguz wanted his ex-girlfriend dead. A model citizen, he wanted to get off the hook of child-support payments and so arranged to have her killed....

2015 has been a good year for online privacy advocates – kind of. Earlier this year, the Investigatory Power Tribunal in the UK ruled that British Intelligence Services (unfortunately not the same as M16) overstepped their legal authority when they accessed the private communications of millions that had been swept and collected under NSA’s mass surveillance programs PRISM and Upstream. By the way, they’re hiring. The victory is a major feather in Privacy International’s cap, a British civil liberties group....

Research in Motion confirmed last week that they acquired a large part of DataViz, maker of the Documents To Go application. “RIM has acquired some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry platform.” Documents To Go is a popular application for mobile users that allows for editing Microsoft Office documents on a smartphone. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s worth looking into as you might see a productivity benefit....

If you’ve ever used Google’s Adwords, you’ll understand the significance of this case. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday revived parts of a lawsuit by Rosetta Stone against Google for trademark infringement. The lawsuit alleged that Google was infringing on Rosetta Stone’s trademarks when the Internet giant sold the marks to third-party advertisers for use as search keywords, the Chicago Tribune reports. Google’s Adwords feature allows advertisers to purchase a keyword....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action alleging excessive force by police, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed in part where plaintiff failed to produce evidence demonstrating that defendant-city’s training policy procedures were inadequate. The ruling reversed in part where plaintiff’s error of naming defendant-officer in his individual capacity was an actual mistake, and plaintiff, by attempting to amend the complaint, was not merely attempting a strategic change. Read Sanders-Burns v....

This may be nothing more than a publicity stunt and a fundraising campaign, but it’s at least a really, really fun one. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, along with Matt Kibbe, the CEO of FreedomWorks, announced yesterday, via a press release and an op-ed on CNN, that they would file a lawsuit against the Obama administration, seeking to end the National Security Agency’s bulk cell phone metadata collection program. They are represented by anti-sodomy crusader and former Virginia Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Ken Cuccinelli....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. While companies should do all they can as a matter of policy, practice and technology to prevent such risks from coming to fruition, there is no such thing as perfect prevention. Accordingly, as a backstop, companies would be prudent to procure appropriate insurance for their Cyber risks. A variety of insurance products to address Cyber risks have entered the marketplace for the past decade....

Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley tech incubator, is getting into the legal tech industry. YC, which made its name providing initial funding to tech companies like AirBnB, Dropbox, and Reddit, is currently funding the legal tech startup Ironclad. Ironclad, part automated forms company, part contract management system, part productivity app, is focused on the legal needs of startups themselves, looking to help startup companies avoid some of the cost and inefficiency of the traditional legal system....

Law firm inefficiencies don’t just make legal work slower and more cumbersome, they also rob lawyers of income. Firms constantly write down hours for tasks that were spent inefficiently, reducing client bills for work that took too long to complete and taking potential income away from attorneys. Just how much money do such write-downs cost? Tens of thousands of dollars per lawyer, per year, according to a new study by the Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute....

There is no shortage of smartphone apps for lawyers. In fact, there might be too many. You may wonder which apps are actually worth your time. Here’s one that is: Fastcase. First and foremost, the app is free. Yes, you can actually conduct free legal research on your iPhone or iPad. Signing up for an account only takes a few minutes. The app also offers a surprisingly wide breadth of legal coverage....

We’ve all read criminal cases where we think, “How can they be this stupid?” And we’ve all seen cases where, out of stupidity, carelessness, or desperation, people pile mistakes upon mistakes. But it’s different when the crimes are allegedly carried out by politicians. We expect them to be smarter. Not so much, for former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen. The McDonnell indictment contains page after page after page of alleged quid-pro-quo....

This is a stupid decision. The Unites States Patent and Trade Office has rejected a Norwegian underwear manufacturer’s requested trademark on “Comfyballs,” their brand of underwear with “PackageFront technology.” Apparently, cutesy references to male genitalia are “vulgar.” Balls? Balls, balls, balls. Is anyone offended yet? Balls. One Million Moms Needs a New Hobby According to UPI, the denial came after lobbying by One Million Moms, a group that fights “indecency.” One Million Moms also opposed Ben and Jerry’s “Schweddy Balls” trademark, which was similarly rejected as too vulgar for a trademark....