I am speaking this afternoon at the
MBO Conference on the Legal Landscape of
Corporate Blogging. It was an honor to be invited to
participate in this year's conference, and I am truly looking
forward to the time.
As an Indiana technology lawyer I monitor areas of law that impact
my clients' business worlds. My colleagues and I monitor
Internet laws, privacy laws, ASP law, SaaS law, cloud computing
law, and various other areas of business law to best advise our
clients on how to navigate the...
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WIth the FTC guideline debate firing up the information technology
law debates, Eric Goldman had an interesting post on Monday about
the possiblity of 47 U.S.C. 230 preempting at least a portion of
the guidelines. Here is the text of his post (found at his
Technology & Marketing Law blog):
"Last week’s release of the
FTC's new Endorsement and Testimonial Guidelines has generated
a significant amount of angst online. The resulting commentary has
been strongly and almost uniformly negative....
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One aspect of any litigation, be it internet litigation, software
litigation, any any other type, is the production of documents in
discovery. Accompanying this necessary procedure is the fear
and stomach-wrenching possiblity of the inadvertent production of
privileged materials. Nothing will make an attorney or a
client go pale faster than realzing that they've produced to
opposinig counsel a correspondence between client and
attorney. The proliferation of electronically stored
information...
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For anyone involved in
blogging or interested in information technology law or Internet
privacy law, there is a strange case with some important lessons
which was handed down by the District Court Western District of
Kentucky last week. The case is
Yoder v.
University of Louisville, 2009 WL 2406235 (W.D. Ky. Aug. 3,
2009).
The opinion is summarized well by Eric Goldman on the
Technology & Marketing
Blog.
Nina Yoder was a University of Louisville nursing student. She
posted a blog post to MySpace...
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As an entrepreneurial law
attorney working with emerging and mid-market technology and SaaS
businesses I am often involved in intellectual property strategies
with my clients. I am not a patent attorney (although my firm
has patent attorneys within our network of partners that we
routinely work with). I do, however, live and breath
technology licensing and my firm handles copyright and trademark
matters for our business law clients.
There is a good article on today's New York Times on-line...
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As an entrepreneurial law firm we partner with our
clients at a unique level (at least unique as compared to most
business law firms). The attorneys at Alerding Castor Hewitt
seek to partner with our business clients providing more than mere
legal services, but serving as full service general counsel.
This means assisting in areas of business such as capital
structuring and private equity, development of business strategy,
and general business operational consulting. We also have
created our
P...
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First, let me give a big "shout out" to my new colleagues Brian
Hewitt and Dave Leske. Brian Hewitt recently became a name
partner with Alerding Castor LLP. The new firm of Alerding
Castor Hewitt LLP exploded into being on June 28, 2009. Brian
is a litigator of the highest caliber with years of experience in
commercial, banking, and probate litigation. Additionally, he
is an outstanding mediator. Dave, who also joined the firm on
June 28, 2009, is a transactional attorney with a background...
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Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act (
47
USC 230), entitled “Protection for private blocking and
screening of offensive material”, is an important federal statute
for any interactive computer service provider. As a
technology lawyer, my law practice largely focuses on SaaS law,
software licensing law and Internet based businesses, this statute
impacts several of my clients.
The statute essentially provides protection for providers of
interactive computer services against information...
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This ticks me off. I
understand that in a struggling economy the State needs to make
budget cuts, but instead of cutting spending in areas that
ultimately do not lead to economic improvement, our State
representatives are
considering cutting spending in an area that
have been the lifeblood of the State for the last quarter century –
technology.
This may have a huge impact on my clients as my law practice
centers on Indiana technology businesses – helping technology
businesses get innovations to...
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For my first foray into the world of blogging,
I think the important first step is to answer the standard
journalism questions necessary for any good story, namely, the who,
what, when, where, and why. Sorry for
the length. I promise that future blogs will be
shorter. Without further adieu, here we
go . . . .
Who: This one is easy because I
know a lot about me. My name is Chris
Stephen and I consider myself first and foremost a
litigator. Some people in my field like
to classify themselves...
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Let's face it - most
contract terms are boring. SaaS licensors and their customers
want to close deals. They want to hammer out the business
terms and key legal terms and get the contract done. I don't
blame them. Nobody in their right mind wakes up in the
morning and says "I want to negotiate a contract today."
After weeks (or even months) of negotiations over key business and
legal terms, the parties often are left with a few miscellaneous
"legal" terms that seem more of a burden than...
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The flow of appellant decisions addressing probate litigation has
temporarily diminished. In gaps such as this, probate attorneys may
find it useful to review some of the precedent that serves as the
basis for probate litigation: The Indiana Code.
The Indiana Code
serves as the starting point for probate matters in general as well
as for probate litigation. For example, Indiana Code §
29-1-7-17 sets forth who may file a will contest, the grounds for a
will contest and the deadline when a will...
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I am
back in Orange County, CA this week with a web analytics client to
pitch their business to an angel investor group for capital
funding.
Private equity investors and firms are still hungry for stategic
investment opportunities. The difference between now and a
year or two ago, is that the investors who are still playing in the
private market are able today to be more discerning on which
investments they take part in. This is good news for
investors; harder for companies in need of...
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This week's chuckle:
Tower: "Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o'clock, 6
miles!"
Delta 351: "Give us another hint! We have digital
watches!"
**************************************************************************************************
Tower: "TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45
degrees."
TWA 2341: "Center, we are at 35,000 feet. How much
noise can we make up here?"
Tower: "Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes
when it hits a 727?"
***************************...
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The Indiana Court of Appeals recently handed down a decision
regarding probate litigation which probate attorneys may find
instructive since one of the issues decided involved an attorney's
decision to follow the client's instructions regarding
disbursements from an estate.
Jerry Storey v. Theodore S. Leonas, Jr. and Leonas &
Associates Ltd.
No. 46A03-0806-CV-300
The facts of this matter are somewhat unusual. An
Illinois resident died in an automobile accident in Indiana.
The other vehicle...
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Probate litigation often arises because siblings take issue when
they are not treated equally by their parents. In those
cases, allegations of undue influence by the favored child/children
are oftentimes made by the other siblings. Probate attorneys should
pay particular attention to the following decision given this
language from the Court of Appeals:
… courts must proceed with caution in analyzing these situations
and that an automatic presumption that any adult child who assists
an aging...
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Probate attorneys involved in probate
litigation (and perhaps all attorneys involved in any litigation
regardless of whether it involves probate, business law, trademark,
intellectual property or any other matter in litigation) may wish
to consider the following opinion:
James W. Smyth v. Judy G. Hester & Estate of Timothy P.
Brazil. Case
No. 29A02-0803-CV-237
This matter involved the trial
court’s award of attorneys’ fees to an estate and an attorney for
actions taken by a law firm on behalf...
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Earlier
this week I wrote a
post on my issues with the Economic Stimulus Plan passed by our
Congressional and Senate leaders last week (and signed by our
President yesterday). Sorry – I don’t use this Blog to rant
often, but this one ticked me off. In the post I noted that
$200M of the funds designated to Indiana are set aside with few
strings attached.
Former President Clinton summarized the three goals of the bill on
Larry King last night:
1. Put money in people's pockets who are in...
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I wholeheartedly believe this
statement: Creativity and Community build Culture. The culture you want to develop (whether culture
for a city, neighborhood, business or otherwise) is based on it's
environment of innovation and creativity and the development of
it's community.
Stated another
way, culture is the collective expressions of a
community. As an example, if you think
of Spanish culture, ideas come to mind of colors, foods, dress,
art… the collective expressions of it's communities. In...
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Last
month I attended a software licensing
conference in San Francisco. One of the sessions I found
most encouraging included a forcast for SaaS
(Software-as-a-Service) markets. In particular, the overall
view of the presenters was that the current economic climate offers
a positive outlook for SaaS businesses. It makes sense.
SaaS provides businesses with several advantages over traditional
software licensing models. Through SaaS licensing, businesses
often experience lower up-front...
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