If a president could make law by tweeting, President Trump would have made more laws than any president in history by now. But a tweet is not a law. It is not an executive order. Trump couldn’t even enforce his no-transgender-military tweet. When it comes to White House jobs, however, the president clearly can tweet that you’re fired. In any case, the Twitter president has raised a question about when does a tweet matter in the law....
Thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, online services like Facebook, Reddit, and Youtube aren’t liable for the copyright violations of their users. Those companies are protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions, but under the terms of the DMCA, those limitations on liability shall apply only when a service provider as adopted and implemented a policy for terminating “repeat infringers.” But who counts as a repeat infringer? No one knows, exactly....
Consumers rarely opt-out of class action settlements. Some trash the notices and others forget after they’re set aside. And if companies are really lucky, a few won’t even submit a claim. But Heather Peters is not an ordinary class member. She’s upset with the Honda hybrid settlement and has launched a small claims court campaign. She’s urging consumers to take the car manufacturer to court and ask for the statutory maximum....
A government official from a poor, West African country wants to move millions of dollars into the United States. Anonymously. And he needs your help. What do you do? No, this isn’t a new version of the Nigerian prince email scam. It’s a hidden camera investigation by CBS’s 60 Minutes and the environmental and human rights nonprofit Global Witness, which sought to expose how easy it is to launder money into the United States, with the help of lawyers of course....
The new year just started, but already there are a number of high profile patent cases brewing. The cases of Halo and Stryker will especially carry the attention of all IP lawyer. Not far behind the twin cases is a hoard of patent cases all pending cert. 2016 promises to be a very fruitful year for patent law. Halo and Stryker: Double Damage It was actually in October of 2015 that this nation’s highest court granted petitions for writ of certiorari to two cases regarding the issue of enhanced damages: Stryker Corp v....
You finally made it. You landed that cushy in-house gig for a hot Silicon Valley company. Your exuberance was soon tested, however, when your company was slammed with two IP infringement lawsuits and a sexual harassment claim within the first week. You can’t handle this yourself, nor should you. You need outside counsel with experience in these areas. The problem is, who do you choose? You might need a firm with experience in intellectual property disputes and employment law....
Sure, lawyers have our in-speak. We talk about obscure rules, using even more obscure Latin phrases, mixed with an alphabet soup of government laws and regulations. But at least we don’t talk about “crushing our quarterly goals” and “synergizing” efforts. Well, we don’t often. Corporate jargon can slip in to legal practice every once in a while, whether it’s from clients or colleagues. If you’ve ever wondered where those awful phrases like “ping me” and “wheelhouse” came from, the National Geographic’s Mark Strauss has done some sleuthing for you, putting together a condensed etymology of workplace clichés....
A new AI tool on the market has the potential to really help some lawyers out. It won’t revolutionize the practice of law, but it might just please those lawyers that have been waiting for a good app to do real time voice-to-text transcription. Unfortunately for those lawyers, for the time being, the new AI powered app still lacks all the functionality you’d want, but it may still be worth checking out....
While Facebook might know quite a bit about you and the company you keep (at least digitally), the social giant has filed for a patent that predicts where its users are going, both literally and physically. The program, dubbed “Offline Trajectories,” promises to help Facebook predict where a user will go after logging off based on historical actions by the user, their friends, and complete strangers. And while this level of predictive technology scores rather high on the Big-Brother/creepiness scale, Facebook asserts that the sole purpose of it is to help serve Facebook users with more relevant localized advertising....
AT&T failed to prevent foreign scam artists from taking advantage of its IP Relay service, and then improperly collected $16 million in government reimbursements, a new lawsuit claims. The Justice Department sued AT&T in federal court in Pittsburgh, Pa., over the telecom giant’s Internet protocol relay service, known as IP Relay, PC Magazine reports. The service is supposed to allow deaf and hearing-impaired customers to type Internet messages that are read aloud to a recipient by an AT&T operator....
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court ruling last week that Louisiana prisons cannot ban newspapers published by the Nation of Islam (NOI). Henry Leonard, a former police officer who is incarcerated at the David Wade Correctional Center (DWCC) for murder, has been a member of the NOI church since 1985. NOI, a recognized religion and a sect of the Islamic faith, publishes a weekly periodical, The Final Call....
David Klasing, owner of Tax Law Office of David W. Klasing, and Sally Janavicius, Senior Client Development with FindLaw, will co-host an upcoming webcast for attorneys titled “The Basics of Marketing Your Firm Online.” The free webcast, held Thursday, Jan. 14th, 2009, at 9 a.m. PST and 1 p.m. PST, will discuss how the Internet has transformed law firm marketing and provide strategies lawyers can use to connect with more clients online....
Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gee, how could someone combine the worst elements of Google Glass and Teddy Ruxpin into one creepy, privacy-chilling, cuddly bundle of technological horror?” Dream no more! A patent application was recently published in which Google (naturally) applied for a patent on “[a]n anthropomorphic device, perhaps in the form factor of a doll or toy” that could “be configured to control one or more media devices....
If the term document sharing is still equivalent to email attachment in your mind, then you may need a crash course in the latest digital communication services. The idea of sharing important legal documents on your smartphone or tablet may seem like a bad idea. This is a very real issue, since lawyers are failing at secure file sharing. Fortunately, Google Drive and other cloud-based services include secure client portals and password protection features that can help with security....
Bankruptcy practice promises a lot of clients but its complexity can make it intimidating for lawyers who don’t plan to specialize. Bankruptcy software is designed to fill that gap. When it comes to software, at minimum you need a program that will streamline the process and prepare a bankruptcy petition. But given the options on the market there are many other things to consider before purchasing. There are lots of popular products including Best Case, EZ-Filing, New Hope’s Bankruptcy 2012, and products tied to legal research subscriptions....
If you’re new to this whole lawyer thing, you’ll soon have to tackle your first client meeting. Do you know how to prepare? Probably not. Unless you’ve spent time meeting with people in other professional settings, the initial client meeting can be thrilling and nerve-racking for some attorneys. Fear not, it will get less scary with repetition. But in the meantime, here are some things that you should do at your very first initial client meeting....
Hewlett-Packard has filed suit against Mark V. Hurd, former CEO and chairman. The lawsuit comes just a day after Hurd joined Oracle, an HP rival, as co-president. HP seeks to enforce confidentiality agreements signed by Hurd. According to HP, the contract signed by Hurd obligates him to protect the trade secrets and other confidential information to which he was privy. HP further argues that Hurd cannot reasonably hold the job of co-president without making use of the trade secrets he learned while at HP....
‘What is this, some kind of convention for plaintiffs’ lawyers?’ That’s what Judge Lucy Koh could have been thinking when two law firms brought 49 more firms into a data breach case. Then she told the attorneys what she was really thinking, and it wasn’t funny. “What made you think I wanted 53 firms churning on this case?” Koh asked the attorneys in federal court in San Jose. Special Master Koh appointed a special master to go through the billing records of 329 lawyers in the class action against Anthem, Inc....
The Eleventh Circuit agreed with the court in a case that ruled against a 67-year-old man sufferning from dementia, granting the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The issue in the case was whether or not the defendant’s were subjectively aware of a substantial risk of serious harm to the plaintiff, which the district court found that they were not. Plaintiff’s complaint had failed to allege that the Sheriff Department custom or policy was actually the cause of plaintiff’s injuries....
Two states. Two laws. Both laws are pretty much the same: Abortion providers have to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. And despite everyone’s expectations to the contrary, the Fifth Circuit just jumped in and issued a seemingly contradictory ruling, protecting a Mississippi abortion clinic. How? “Today, we follow the principle announced by the Supreme Court nearly fifty years before the right to an abortion was found in the penumbras of the Constitution … "...
