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'Should I stay or should I go?'<br>That was the question that those classic '80s punk rockers The Clash asked in a song by the same title about a romance gone awry. That's just a song, though.<br>But, interestingly enough, that hard-driving ditty is applicable to the world of e-business: The entrepreneur contemplating the future of his or her business ' a love built of the same good times and bad, and with the same blood, sweat and tears as a real-life romance ' confronts the same dilemma when it's time to make that decision: Should he stay or should he go? How could a person not expect such perseveration? When an entrepreneur reads about the rapid rise of YouTube from startup to $1.65 billion buyout, he or she can easily forget about the many new firms that fail, and instead imagine being the personification of ' or fantasize about ' having a company that becomes the next tech-economy icon.
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Although landlords and tenants often have different views on various topics, they share a common interest in protecting their premises against theft. Until recently, security considerations were generally limited to decisions concerning appropriate locks and the installation of stout hardware. In the new millennium, however, securing electronic entryways to premises may be of even greater importance, and it behooves landlords and tenants alike to keep abreast of developments in computer-related security breaches. In particular, landlords and tenants must be alert to a variety of identity theft threats, including phishing scams, in which they receive an e-mail from a seemingly reputable company (eg, a tenant receives an e-mail that appears to be from the landlord) that attempts to obtain personal information from the recipient when in fact the e-mail was sent by an identity thief.
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The proliferation of flash drives, iPods, camera cell phones, Black-berries, and similar electronic devices has put all companies at added risk for insider theft. With the use of these devices, downloading significant amounts of data is easy, virtually instantaneous, and often very difficult to detect. These risks apply to essentially all companies that allow employees access to electronically stored, confidential, and proprietary information.<br>So what is today's company supposed to do to protect its valuable, sensitive information in the face of the risks posed by new portable devices?
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Recently, in a case of first impression, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board refused to grant trademark protection to the flavor of an antidepressant tablet on the grounds that the flavor was functional and incapable of serving as a mark. <i>In re N.V. Organon</i>, 79 USPQ2d 1639 (TTAB 2006). The decision is a departure from the trend of extending protection to nontraditional trademarks. Although the Board left the door open to the possibility of registering flavor as a trademark, it made clear that future applicants will face significant challenges in registering such marks, including: 1) proving that a flavor has acquired secondary meaning; 2) overcoming the difficulties inherent in protecting a flavor due to the subjective nature of taste; and 3) proving that a flavor functions as a source indicator despite the fact that consumers are not exposed to a product's flavor prior to purchase.
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On Oct. 27, 2006, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in <i>Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp.</i> (No. 05-1056), preparing to elucidate the contours of patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. §271(f) as applied to the exportation of software code. This case marks the first time in the 22 years since Congress enacted the provision that the Court will venture into this area. The outcome may have significant ramifications for the software industry because §271(f) was widely assumed to apply only to the tangible components of a physical machine. If §271(f) applies equally to software, then software companies will need to rethink their exposure to liability when exporting software abroad. Liability under §271(f) may extend beyond the initial act of exporting and further include downstream activities, such as copying and installing that are done entirely outside of the United States.
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The difference between winning and losing a billion dollars in a patent case can be as seemingly insignificant as a date. But when that date is a disputed priority date for the asserted patent, it is not only potentially outcome-determinative, but also quite difficult to establish. A priority dispute often arises in patent litigation when the accused infringer asserts a prior art reference that predates the filing of the application for the patent-in-suit, but postdates the time at which work on the patented invention began. Faced with this art, the patentee has two options: fight the prior art on the patent's merits, potentially limiting the scope of the claims and impairing its infringement arguments, or 'swear behind' the reference by establishing a pre-filing priority date before the asserted reference, and thus eliminate the reference as prior art. In most cases, swearing behind the reference is the better option because it does not typically affect the substance of the claims. By swearing behind the reference, the patentee does not have to draw distinctions between the reference and the claims that can be used against it later in claim construction or in the context of a noninfringement argument. But establishing an earlier priority date can be tricky because it generally requires evidence, including corroborating documents, showing that the invention was reduced to practice before the inventor filed the patent application.
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There are a variety of products and tools available for comparing Microsoft Word documents. Within native Word, edits can be tracked using the track changes tool that, by default, marks document edits with an underline as text is inserted and a line through text that is deleted. However, many firms have a policy against using the track changes feature because of concerns about metadata. As each edit is marked, Word also notes the author of the change and the date and time the change was made. Additionally, a record of the last 10 authors is embedded in the document as well. However, metadata scrubbers have eliminated this issue by allowing users to retain tracked changes but eradicate the metadata they contain as well as remove the complete author history. Tracking changes is finding new popularity in law firms because of the metadata cleaning capability.
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Knowledge management (KM) as a discipline is simultaneously relatively new and very old. We, as people, want to share ' or rather we acknowledge that it is vital; societies were built on the interchange of information and knowledge. Historically, apprenticeships and livery companies ensured the transfer of tacit expert knowledge. We still do this in our personal lives; we share happily with friends and strangers. Yet at work, and particularly in professions, the lack of sharing and capture of contextualized knowledge is so extreme that an entire industry has arisen to help us relearn and apply what should be natural to us.
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Several months ago, the New York attorney general filed suit in a New York state court seeking an injunction against Direct Revenue LLC enjoining the firm from secretly installing spyware or sending ads through already installed spyware. <i>New York v. Direct Revenue LLC</i>, No. 401325/06 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co.). The suit has resulted in public disclosure of some of the most reviled Internet marketing tactics by a company that recently claimed it had changed its evil ways and has resulted in allegations of financial connections to some 'good guy' Internet behemoths such as Yahoo, Vonage, MySpace and others.
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If a doctor's mistakes can be broadcast over the Internet for all the world to see, will he or she be more or less likely to settle a claim? What about plaintiffs? What are the implications for them should their suits against doctors and hospitals some day become public knowledge?<br>Government entities, private groups and even disgruntled private citizens are starting to use the Internet to broadcast their displeasure with what they see as 'dangerous doctors' or 'money-grubbing plaintiffs,' spreading the reach of the Web beyond the boundaries of the litigation itself by naming names of those who sue or are sued for medical malpractice.