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Marriott International has just agreed to purchase Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide for $12.2 billion in cash and stock, a move that will create the largest hotel company on the planet. The merger is likely to come as great relief to Starwood, whose stock has suffered over the last few years due to the changing of CEOs and talk of sale. The merger will be completed with $11.9 billion in stock and $340 million in cash: a transaction made almost entirely with the trade of equities....

October is the official month of many things, breast cancer awareness and cyber security awareness, and now we can add something else: National Women’s Small Business Month. While the ABA does not keep tabs on the number of women-owned law firms, American Express states that women-owned business in general are “[t]he only bright spot in recent years with respect to privately held company job growth has been among women-owned firms. They have added an estimated 175,000 jobs to the U....

There’s a new free cloud service out there, and it’s perfect for attorneys who are addicted to their smartphones. Pogoplug Cloud is providing 5 GB of free cloud storage, which can be tied to your mobile phone. In order to sign up, simply use your smartphone or tablet to download and register a new account. The Pogoplug Mobile application is available through both the Apple App Store and the Android Market....

The gender discrimination case of Lori Franchina against the Providence, Rhode Island fire department is not for the faint of heart. Despite seemingly being on a fast track to a management position within the department, Franchina’s career trajectory seemed to be abruptly cut short after she complained of retaliation for talking to a superior about another firefighter’s immature behavior. After she was questioned about the incident, she began encountering severe retaliation as well as gender discrimination....

An emoji is worth a thousand words, and that’s a legal problem. According to a Santa Clara University Law School professor, emojis and emoticons have popped up recently in at least 80 U.S. court opinions. The problem is they can be misunderstood. “As emoticons and emojis play an increasingly important role in how we communicate with each other, they will increasingly raise legal issues,” says professor Eric Goldman. In researching emojis in the law, Goldman found many references but few visual depictions of emojis....

Comic Con – the con stands for convention, obviously. Many years ago, the San Diego Comic Convention (SDCC) started the trend of nerdfests. They were also denied a trademark over the obviously abbreviated “Comic Con,” but were granted the rights to the hyphenated “Comic-Con.” Fast forward to today, and there are comic conventions nationwide, including one in Salt Lake City (the Salt Lake Comic Con, or SLCC). The SLCC folks, seeking to promote their upcoming convention, drove a vinyl-skinned vehicle around the much larger SDCC last month, a feat of advertising that led the local folks to send a cease-and-desist letter to their alleged imitators to the north....

The Tenth Circuit court of South Carolina just became one of the best courts in the nation. No, it’s not because of its historic court houses, important decisions, or swift handling of justice. It’s the dogs. The state court’s Solicitor’s Office announced last week that it will join a growing list of courthouses that have added a canine to the court staff. The dog’s main task will be comforting crime victims, but we’d like to think that a stressed lawyer could give Fido a pet or two as well....

By sending out a wall of sound through the oceans, Navy sonar can detect enemy ships hundreds of miles away, day or night, in weather fair or foul. But that blast of sound can be damaging to the ocean’s inhabitants, deafening whales and disturbing other marine mammals. Some marine mammals swim hundreds of miles to escape sonar, others may bleed from their eyes or ears, and some beach themselves on shore to get away from the harsh sounds....

Conviction of defendant for conspiracy to issue and use counterfeit checks is affirmed where: 1) because the government affirmatively disclaimed the waiver-of-appeal provision, there is no justification for proceeding sua sponte to inquire into its preclusive effect; 2) U.S.S.G. section 5G1.3(b) did not require the district court to impose a concurrent sentence in this case; and 3) district court’s decision to run the sentence consecutively was substantively reasonable. Read US v....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Do companies have legitimate concerns that departing employees may take critical corporate information with them when they leave? You bet, according to recent survey statistics. Indeed, as many of 70% of workers revealed that they would have “clear plans to take something with them upon actually leaving,” according to a survey of London company employees by Imperva, a data security company....

While everyone over the past two decades has been clamoring for the best laptop they can afford, a recent study among law firms shows that desktops have not fallen out of fashion. Nearly half of the law firms that responded to the 2017 LTN survey stated that in the next hardware refresh, they planned to get desktops for their lawyers. Sure, being able to remotely access the network, files, or whatever digital resources a firm has available would make a laptop seem like the right choice for firm associates, but when it comes to security and cost, desktops tend to outperform laptops for a few simple reasons....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. At this point, you likely already know about the many tasks and functions that can be performed by artificial intelligence (AI). Indeed, you probably have learned quite a bit about that from prior editions of this blog. And now there is more, this time in the realm of art. When it comes to works of art, authenticity is of vital importance....

Language is a cultural thing, not a legal thing. But they can intersect in law practice, and the work depends on the community where lawyers serve. Attorneys who speak that community’s language typically have an advantage over those who do not. It might be an immigrant neighborhood, or a client from a foreign culture. But bilingual lawyers find their niche in a demographic area more than in a practice area....

A New York brokerage CEO was sentenced to six months in prison last Thursday, after admitting to falsifying invoices provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Charles Moore, CEO of the broker-dealer Crucible Capital Group, pleaded guilty last November to obstructing an SEC investigation into Crucible’s filing inaccurate net capital figures with the Commission. Moore, it seems, had instructed a young employee to create false invoices, obscuring Crucible’s debts. Crucible Capital marketed itself as a “boutique” investment banking firm, Reuters reports....

Right now, what kind of phone do you have? How about tablet? And your work computer? Home computer? Our tech worlds are fractured amongst Apple, Google, Microsoft, Ubuntu, and others. Our phones and tablets run iOS or Android, our desktops OS X Mavericks or Windows 7 and 8.1. Why do we have different operating systems for mobile and PCs? And why are the apps not cross-compatible, ensuring that you can pick up that legal brief on your phone and make edits without ruining the formatting?...

A young, well-dressed African-American man interviewed for a job at Eddie Bauer, but he didn’t get the job and he never knew why. In a new lawsuit, however, a former employee there says she knows why. The store manager at the Augusta store allegedly put it this way: “Well, he’s black and customers won’t buy anything from him,” the manager said in Atkins-Poulin v. Eddie Bauer. “We never hire people like that here....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Not surprisingly, educational institutions possess all sorts of private data with respect to their students. However, a bit more surprising is how easy it is for the privacy of that data to be compromised. For example, the Washington Post recently reported that personal information relating to in excess of 103,000 former adult education students in Virginia was misplaced....

The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) is a pain for those subject to it. A sex offender must register periodically in each jurisdiction where he resides, works, or goes to school, and he must periodically appear in person to update information and be photographed. Despite the inconvenience, courts have overwhelmingly upheld SORNA requirements. This week, the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a plethora of arguments against SORNA enforcement....

A former in-house attorney is suing insurance giant AIG over allegedly racist in-house jokes that likened him to the 1970s cartoon character Fat Albert. “Hey! Hey! Hey!” was the title character’s catch phrase on “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,” a Saturday morning cartoon that ran from 1972 to the mid-1980s. Comedian Bill Cosby voiced Fat Albert, an obese black kid who ended each episode with a rock song. But when uttered in the workplace, “Hey!...

You or your firm may have a Facebook page. Maybe not. It seems that the omnipresent social networking site has already infiltrated the judicial system in a variety of manifestations. When debating whether or not to join the Facebook ranks, it may be interesting to look at how judges are approaching the site and other social media. The Conference on Court Public Information Officers has taken a look at judiciary’s use of Facebook and other social media....