May 12th 2008
Are virtual worlds a technology distraction, or the next frontier for major brands? That’s the question I took on in Thomson CompuMark’s most recent client newsletter. If you’d like some concrete examples of how brands are experimenting in virtual worlds, and to find out about the array of legal issues being taken on by early […]
May 11th 2008
The still-controversial Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (or PRO-IP) Act has passed the House of Representatives by a 410-10 margin. The proposed legislation would allow the government to seize personal property, such as computers, that are allegedly used in copyright infringement. In addition, it creates a new position within the Executive Office of […]
May 9th 2008
The way your competitors acquire, protect, and promote their intellectual assets can inadvertently signal their next moves. Increasingly savvy marketers are following how competitors manage their intellectual assets to get a sense of what they’re preparing to do next. The intellectual assets we’re discussing here include the rights conferred by intellectual property, human knowledge secured […]
May 8th 2008
Last year, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company launched a virtual ventures contest in Second Life. Now the firm has published an outlook report on how established businesses are reaching consumers in virtual worlds, and notes that many companies are”ignoring them at their peril.” Current business uses of virtual worlds extend beyond marketing to training, […]
May 6th 2008
Colorado has passed new anti-spam legislation, which establishes violations of federal CAN-SPAM law as also being fraud under state law. It then extends the law to those who knowingly falsify routing of point-of-origin information, while establishing protections for plaintiffs, and a statutory penalty of $1,000 per email with a ceiling of $10 million. You can find […]
May 6th 2008
In the court case of Atlantic v. Howell, the judge denied a request of summary judgment against the Howells. The court decision was surprisingly incisive, rejecting the RIAA’s argument that merely leaving copies of copyrighted works in a place where someone might copy them, without any evidence that they did, is a violation. This so-called […]
May 5th 2008
Last week the Italian tax office posted the names, addresses, income and tax status of every single Italian citizen on a public website. No kidding. They performed this public service just days before the outgoing centre-left Prodi government was due to leave office. Tax officials explained this was “to allow the free circulation of information […]
May 5th 2008
Three months ago, on the day when this offer was announced, I made the post Microsoft Purchase of Yahoo Won’t Happen as Predicted. Over the weekend, Steve Ballmer withdrew MSFT’s offer. Yahoo stock is trading about 20% below where it closed Friday; Microsoft is up. The Wall Street Journal‘s Deal Blog dissects Ballmer’s letter to Yang […]
May 3rd 2008
Put your trademark into Tweet Scan, a real-time database of Twitter postings, and you can see what people are saying about it, or any other topic of interest. This free service provides automatic daily or weekly summaries of up to five terms sent by email or RSS. Go ahead, see what people are talking about, it […]
May 2nd 2008
The New York Court of Appeals 1st Division recently upheld a lower court ruling that emails with signature lines “constitute ‘signed writings’ within the meaning of the statute of frauds, since plaintiff’s name at the end of his e-mail signified his intent to authenticate the contents.” At issue was the modification of an employment contract […]
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