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Recent Posts
- September Changes to Estates Practice: Enduring Powers of Attorney and Representation Agreements
- Patent Assignment: Distinguishing Trolls from Legitimate Assignees, Part 2
- Patent Assignment: Distinguishing Trolls from Legitimate Assignees, Part 1
- Patent Assignment: Trolling the Gap between Potential and Actual Usefulness
- Privacy between Private Parties and the Disclosure of Information
- IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model
- Music for a Pound, or a Pound of Flesh?
- Lawyers and iPhones (and iPads) Shouldn’t Mix
- RoB Magazine declares victory on the Smartphone Plains of Abraham
- Research in Motion’s Opportunity to Promulgate Freedom
- Bill C-32: The Latest Attempt to Amend the Copyright Act
- Interpreting the NHL and the disallowed Sedin goal
- The Speciation of Web Sites
- Library Manifesto
- Technology (law) is everywhere!
- How to save a drowning business
- Information is the Good, the Currency, and the Era
- Opening the Scope of Employee Contribution
- On Virtual Travel
- Who carries your Web 2.0 banner?
Recent Comments
- Jeremy Costin's weblawg.net Patent Assignment: Distinguishing Trolls from Legitimate Assignees, Part 1 on Patent Assignment: Trolling the Gap between Potential and Actual Usefulness
- Ben Gornall on IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model
- Nimda Sys on Information is the Good, the Currency, and the Era
- Francina Kocaj on Information is the Good, the Currency, and the Era
- David T Michaels on IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model
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Category Archives: Business Law
Privacy between Private Parties and the Disclosure of Information
Privacy law in Canada between private parties is biased toward the protection of privacy rather than the protection of free enterprise. … In Canada, and specifically in British Columbia, an individual’s personal information may be considered forever to be bonded to that individual. Continue reading
Posted in Business Law, Communications, Privacy
Tagged Communications, disclosure, ethics, PIPA, PIPEDA, Privacy
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IP Litigation as a(n Illegal) Business Model
The difference between a law firm that makes its money by suing on behalf of it clients and a patent trolling business is this: A law firm is an association of professionals who represent injured parties; a patent troll acquires the right to injury and injury damages without having been injured. Continue reading
Posted in Business Law, Intellectual Property
Tagged ethics, Intellectual Property, patent troll
2 Comments
Technology (law) is everywhere!
At the firm where I’m working, I deal a lot with wills & estates, family law, and small business. “But wait!” you say. “Where’s the intellectual property and information technology?”
And I answer, “Everywhere.” Continue reading
Who carries your Web 2.0 banner?
What’s at stake when you let others step in your online footprint? Goodwill has to do with the perception of your enterprise, and liability has to do with getting into real legal trouble. How are they connected by this Web 2.0 stuff? … Being obnoxious, opinionated, or siding with one side of a contentious debate will not likely create more than a bad taste in the reader’s mouth. Being wrong, when you carry a banner of knowing better, can create a problem. Continue reading
Does WOM or Social Network Marketing Create Agency?
With WOM and social network marketing, we move from getting people to wear branded clothing to transforming them into fans banding together to pontificate, not on the merits of your product, but on the social imperative of being a fan of the brand. … We do have something that looks a lot like agency… Once you let someone use the stuff you’re supposed to be protecting, and you let them use it to an extent that gives them a fair bit of potential power because of the near-instantaneous and viral nature of the networks used, you’re actually handing over some pretty hefty reins. Continue reading
What would you call open-source marketing?
Instead of tightening your grip on intellectual property (mostly trade-mark with a healthy dose of copyright and some neighbouring rights) and then hoping for royalties, the group doing the marketing attempts to engineer a type of personality cult for the brand. … What I’m talking about is tying differences (real or created) to cultural phenomena, and then grabbing hold of those phenomena and driving from that end; the product becomes a tag-along to those cultural memes. Continue reading
Competition and the NHL
It’s hockey season, and that’s the reason for the poll that’s been on the sidebar. However, a reader asked me to open it up for discussion (i.e. put it into a post) so that’s what I’m doing. The issue is … Continue reading
Posted in Business Law
Tagged antitrust, Balsillie, Bettman, Competition, hockey, nhl, Southern Ontario, sports franchise
4 Comments
Is there a Master Chef at Bell?
Bell claims that they have to throttle bandwidth or Internet access will be slow for everyone. Since it was only with the discovery that Bell was shuffling high-payload users into a slow lane that we found out that there were people moving along faster, it now recasts the entire argument as follows:
Bell originally marketed ultra-high speed access as a fast lane since everything was getting slow. Now we know that it was only slow for those upon whom slowness was being forced by Bell so that they could then justify the higher price of ultra-high speed (i.e. allegedly unthrottled) access. Bell claims this is necessary, as there is an imminent threat to everyone’s bandwidth. But unlike a concrete highway, bandwidth is not based on scarce real property. It is based on virtually limitless fibre-optic trunks and always-improving server technology. The physical space occupied by these bandwidth highways is minimal; the physical space required for expansion, if it is in fact necessary, is negligible. Continue reading
Selling your Everything II: More on non-competition clauses, IP assignments/waivers, and employment contracts
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on the subject of over-reaching employment contracts. Click here for it. Anyway, I promised that I would have the next part up within days and well, it’s been kind of crazy. … Continue reading
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