Saving Money in Patent Litigation: The Best Litigation Team

May 11, 2010

In an ideal world, I would want to know the personality type, temperament, and action style of the attorneys working on my company’s patent case.
An important key to success in litigation is the core personality of the litigators.
Are they highly competitive?  Do they thrive on winning?  Do they love complex, difficult challenges?  Are they strategic, [...]

Read the full article →

Saving Money in Patent Litigation: Hiring the Best Lead Litigation Attorney

May 9, 2010

Whether you make the strategic decision to enforce your patents or your company has been sued for infringement, you will need to hire litigation attorneys.
As I discussed in my last post in this series, winning and cost effective litigation is really predicated on the personality, skill and experience of the individual attorneys and not the [...]

Read the full article →

Some VCs Don’t Think Software Patents Are Important

May 7, 2010

My old law school friend Jason Mendelson, the Managing Director of the VC fund the Foundry Group, takes issue with a recent claim that “76 percent of startup managers report that venture capital investors consider patents when making funding decisions.”
In his blog Mendelson’sMusings, Jason refutes this stat  and discusses how it has been misreported as [...]

Read the full article →

Saving Money in Patent Litigation: Hiring the Best Law Firm

May 6, 2010

Patent litigation is a high stakes game.  Potential damages can be astronomical and the cost of litigation alone can bankrupt a startup.
When you engage in patent litigation, whether as the plaintiff (the party suing) or as the defendant (the party being sued), you want to win.
To win, most companies want to hire the best law [...]

Read the full article →

Saving Money in Patent Litigation: Series Overview

May 4, 2010

Patent litigation is expensive—often horrifically expensive—with attorneys’ fees quickly escalating to millions of dollars, even in relatively small cases.  In some cases, plaintiffs may claim patent infringement damages in the hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars.
It’s a high stakes game.  Patent litigation can break a company or conversely lead to phenomenal damages and [...]

Read the full article →

Copyrights, Independent Contractors & the Work Made for Hire Doctrine

May 3, 2010

In a previous post, I explained the work made for hire doctrine of the Copyright Act as it applies to employees.  In this post, I’ll generally explain the most troubling, confusing subject — how the doctrine applies to independent contractors.
As I’ve said, I hate this convoluted, confusing doctrine.  This is the type of law that [...]

Read the full article →

ACTiVATE: Help for Women Entrepreneurs

May 2, 2010

I recently went to a conference, Equity Matters:  The Route to NASDAQ, sponsored by  organizations that help women entrepreneurs, including Activate, Springboard and Path Forward.
The conference was filled with amazing women who have started technology companies and thrived.  These women are now giving back to a new group of women entrepreneurs.
I was excited to find [...]

Read the full article →

Copyrights, Works Made For Hire & Employees

April 20, 2010

I’ll be honest.  I hate the work made for hire doctrine in the Copyright Act.  It’s a confusing mess to understand and it tends to give some companies a false sense of security about intellectual property ownership.
In some cases, like for regular, salaried employees, the doctrine is somewhat straight forward. But for independent contractors, the [...]

Read the full article →

Why Copyright Assignments Can Be Critical for Your Company

April 15, 2010

As discussed in my last post Copyright Rights, a copyright isn’t a single right – it’s a bundle of rights.  And a copyright owner can transfer some or all of the rights.
A full transfer of rights is called a copyright assignment.

For startups, it’s important to get full copyright assignments for logo designs, website designs, [...]

Read the full article →

Copyright Rights & Licenses

April 2, 2010

Have you ever wondered why most copyright licenses have a laundry list of rights?
For example, the MySpace.com Terms of Use Agreement has a typical copyright license which you grant to Myspace when you upload content to the site.  It says:
By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →