Archive for the ‘ Law ’ Category

Insurance and Commercial Contracts in Technology

If your General Liability insurance policy extends to $2,000,000 per occurrence does that mean you can just negotiate a $2M cap on liability in your commercial contracts and assume that you will be covered? Unfortunately, No.  Most GL insurance policies are quite complex.  Here are just a few of the issues related to GL insurance [ READ MORE ]

Big, Important Legal Issues

In the last two months, I’ve received two calls that reminded me that start-up founders, employees, and the self-employed have huge legal issues outside of traditional start-up law. So, I’ve decided to make a Public Service Announcement:  If you are self-employed or involved in an early-stage start-up, consider the following issues and seek the appropriate [ READ MORE ]

Laws Of Nature Are Not Patentable

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court released its unanimous opinion in Mayo v. Prometheus. I was pleased to see the Court affirm and clarify the unpatentability of laws of nature. Here’s a generalized statement of the law of nature at issue in this case: Certain concentrations of a specific drug metabolite in the blood indicate (a) [ READ MORE ]

Tech Law Garden: Year 2 In Review

The second year of running my own private law practice was similar to the first. Fast, furiously busy, and over before I knew it. The biggest change is Tech Law Garden has added a part-time Junior attorney! She does great work. It’s exciting to have someone to collaborate with, and the clients get a better [ READ MORE ]

Indemnities — Boring, But Important

If there’s one topic that’s guaranteed to make my clients’ eyes glaze over, it’s indemnities. My clients will fight to the death regarding the business points that they believe are important. But, often, by the time we get to Section 18 on page 13, they’re ready to mentally check out of the conference call and [ READ MORE ]

The anti-NDA

In the last two weeks, I’ve seen a surprising glut of Non-Disclosure Agreements that were exactly the *opposite* of what my clients expected to see. What to do I mean? I mean, these NDAs all had express permissions for the receiving party to use or disclose the information they receive in the course of their [ READ MORE ]

A Novel Open Source License

I’m in London, finishing up a European vacation with a visit to a couple of clients for work before heading back to Silicon Valley. Today, one client’s CEO showed me around and introduced me to one of the tech guys. After shaking my hand, one of them immediately enlarged the newest open source license he [ READ MORE ]

Amazon Calls California’s Cards

Wednesday, California’s Governor signed a bill into law that modifies the definition of “doing business in the state” for the purposes of collecting sales tax. The bill explicitly includes retailers entering into agreements under which a person or persons in this state, for a commission or other consideration, directly or indirectly refer potential purchasers, whether [ READ MORE ]

A Second Facebook Movie?

Paul Ceglia’s allegations regarding his role in the founding of Facebook are grandiose. The legal response from the Facebook team is similarly fantastic. No matter how it plays out — it’s shaping up to be a huge fight and will likely make a great story.  I can’t help but wonder if this scenario might find [ READ MORE ]

Year in Review

Wow!  That was fast. I”ve been running my own law firm for over a year.  It’s been a blast and I’ve been very fortunate — quite a bit of exciting and interesting work came to my door last year. Some of the highlights include: Managing a dispute from initial demand letter to arbitration award — [ READ MORE ]