Eastern District Tennessee Severs BitTorrent Lawsuit
BitTorrent Swarm ≠ "Transaction or Occurrence" I used to blog about BitTorrent lawsuits quite a bit, but dropped that in favor of folks who blogged about them much more comprehensively. But there was one BitTorrent lawsuit that I've been following pretty carefully...
Practical Guidance Series Inaugural Entry: Copyright Registration for Software
We at Aaron | Sanders will be making some big changes to our online presence shortly (and I didn't want to say that in print until we actually meant it - we've been working on the changes for months but it's really getting close now....) To go along with the rest of...
Let’s Sue Everyone! More on the Personal Liability of Business Owners for Infringement
Lawyers Sue Too Much, Except When They Don’t Last week, I discussed the scary court decision, Universal Furniture Int’l, Inc. v. Frankel, in which the owners of a company were found liable for their company’s copyright infringement, even though they were not...
Let's Sue Everyone! More on the Personal Liability of Business Owners for Infringement
Lawyers Sue Too Much, Except When They Don’t Last week, I discussed the scary court decision, Universal Furniture Int’l, Inc. v. Frankel, in which the owners of a company were found liable for their company’s copyright infringement, even though they were not...
Owner Liable for his Company's Copyright Infringement
Incorporation? Shmincorporation! Since Aaron & Sanders is in the business of (among other things) helping start-ups get started up, one of the most frequent questions Tara and I get is whether it was worthwhile to incorporate or form some similar corporate entity,...
Owner Liable for his Company’s Copyright Infringement
Incorporation? Shmincorporation! Since Aaron & Sanders is in the business of (among other things) helping start-ups get started up, one of the most frequent questions Tara and I get is whether it was worthwhile to incorporate or form some similar corporate entity,...
Descent into Madness: Publicity Rights and Free Speech
Did the Ninth Circuit Contradict Itself? A few days ago, we got two opinions handed down by the same court, written by the same judge, on essentially the same subject, involving the same defendant that reach seemingly contradictory results. On July 31, the Ninth...
Whoops Did You Just Give Away Your Copyright?
Common-Sense Decision Is a Trap for the Unwary (and Everyone Else) A surprisingly fertile field for litigation are “multiple listing services” (MLS) and related real-estate websites. Here’s an MLS for Nashville. The Internet completely inverted the...
A Requiem for a Lawsuit Signifying Nothing: De Minimis and Fair Use
Insert Pun Here: “Dead,” “Requiem,” “Past,” “Woody” A lot of people breathed a huge sigh of relief when a Mississippi federal judge dismissed (at the pleadings stage) claims for copyright infringement stemming from a paraphrase of a well-known William Faulkner quote...
Toward a Constitutional Model of Statutory Damges Part 2
An Ironic Model: Follow Exxon Because it's NOT a Constitutional Ruling Way back in October, I got half-way to proposing a constitutional model for statutory damage awards. More precisely, I got through the part where I reject the two leading models, which happened to...
The Terrific Twos
Two great years ago today, Rick Sanders and Tara Aaron set foot in the office of Aaron | Sanders PLLC for the first time. We're growing up fast - since then we've moved into our big new offices at The Trolley Barns, added the help of our incomparable assistant, Lynne...
Patent Trolls-A Primer (Part 2)
Why NPEs Are OMG! Last time, I explained what patent “trolls”—more politely known as a non-practicing entities or “NPEs”—are and why their business model is such a good one. Mostly they benefit from asymmetrical warfare: a defendant must spend much more money, time...
