Category Archives: General
How to Handle Squatters in Florida
Discovering that a home has become the residence of a squatter is always an unsettling experience. If the home is privately owned, it can feel like a violation of the owner’s privacy. If it is a commercially owned property, then the squatters can mean serious financial damage to the property’s value. Fortunately, the law… Read More »
Dealing with Bad Reviews Online
Internet review platforms like Yelp have provided a voice for any customer to broadcast their experience with a company to the world at large. While this benefits companies that receive consistently strong reviews, it also allows a small number of dissatisfied customers to do serious damage to a company’s reputation and its bottom line…. Read More »
Copyright Law as a Solution to Revenge Porn
Updating the law tends to be a slow, laborious process that often takes years. This can be a problem when the law attempts to govern advances in technology, which can happen at a much faster pace. Such a problem has arisen in the area of revenge porn. Revenge porn is a recent phenomenon that… Read More »
Automakers Employing Copyright Law Against Hobbyists
As software finds its way into more and more pieces of previously analog equipment, it expands the reach of copyright law. This has led to new groups being forced to navigate the complex American intellectual property system. One such group includes car hobbyists, who are now being forced to deal with car manufacturer copyrights… Read More »
Options for Handling Bad Customers
People just starting out in a business often think that any customer is a good customer, but often that is not the case. While putting up with the occasional rudeness might be worthwhile, customers who are constantly demanding or unreasonably failing to live up to their duties can end up costing a business more… Read More »
Understanding Cease and Desist Letters
Many people picture legal disputes being settled in court, a judge or jury rendering a decision in the case after an extended trial. However, most cases never make it that far. It is much more common for cases to be settled by the litigants in advance of the trial, and even those that do… Read More »
How to Hold a Sweepstakes
Sweepstakes and other promotional contests are a common marketing tool that companies both large and small use to attract new customers or build a rapport with old ones. Despite the common nature of sweepstakes, Florida law heavily regulates them to ensure that they do not constitute unfair trade practices or gambling. The full contents… Read More »
Supreme Court Clarifies the Power of the Patent and Trademark Office
Although trademark law affects businesses every day, it has the reputation for being something of a niche area of law that many lawyers do not involve themselves with. Consequently, trademark issues rarely end up going before the U.S. Supreme Court. However, it happened twice this term. One of the cases, B&B Hardware v. Hargis… Read More »
Understanding Limitations on Corporate Liability
Corporations confer a variety of benefits on their shareholders and executives. One of the most important benefits from a business litigation standpoint is that the corporate structure creates a way for investors to limit their liability in the company in case something goes awry. This limited liability means that in most circumstances, the corporation’s… Read More »
Why Small Business Owners Should Care about Trademark Genericide
The law protects trademarks because they function as “source identifiers.” When a person sees a company logo on a product, they know which company is responsible for it. This allows consumers to easily find companies whose products they like, while avoiding those who sell inferior goods. Understanding this purpose of trademark law allows for… Read More »
What to Do When Your Company Gets Sued
For most people a civil lawsuit is a rare occurrence. Maybe they will need to go through a divorce, or deal with a personal injury lawsuit that will bring them into court a few times over the course of their lives. The same cannot be said for companies. In fact, a study performed by… Read More »
How Statutes of Limitations Affect Your Case
To paraphrase former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., people often mistake courts of law for courts of justice. While judges often strive to come to equitable outcomes, and laws are supposed to be fair, there are also practical considerations at play. These sorts of considerations can sink an otherwise winning claim, if… Read More »
Contesting an “Incontestable” Mark
One of the benefits of registering a trademark with the federal government is that after a certain period of time a mark becomes “incontestable.” That sounds like a powerful benefit. No one wants to be sued by someone with a mark that the government has labeled as beyond contestation. Yet, the name is actually… Read More »
Learning to Read Boilerplate
In a world where contracts and agreements can be stored electronically, more and more small business owners are having to deal with written contracts in their day to day dealings. In an ideal world, people would have the time and money to let lawyers look over every contract before they signed it, but that… Read More »
The Basics of Music Copyright
Music copyright is one of the most common ways for people to interact with the intellectual property system. It affects many different services that people use all the time, such as Pandora, YouTube, and Netflix. It even appears in the news, such as the recent multimillion dollar judgment against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams… Read More »
The Supreme Court Deals with Tacky Trademarks
The U.S. Supreme Court is usually content to leave trademark law more or less untouched, relying on the lower courts to adjust the doctrine since it is something of a niche area of law. Yet, the Court has actually heard two trademarks cases this term. One, B&B Hardware v. Hargis Industries has yet to… Read More »
Surviving a Deposition as a Witness
Clients often benefit from taking an active role as a member of their own legal team, but depositions are an area that can force clients to take a particularly prominent position. Depositions are procedurally-authorized interviews that allow the lawyers to ask questions of the other side’s witnesses, including the other side’s client. These sorts… Read More »
Duties of the Board of Directors
One of the biggest problems faced by corporations is the known in economics as the “principal-agent problem.” Basically, the issue is that there are all sorts of costs imposed when one person has to act for the best interests of another. Agents may not know what the principal actually wants, or they may act… Read More »
A Copyright Law Blog Post about How Copyright Law Affects Blog Posts
With the maturation of the internet, more and more people are putting their own copyrighted work out into the world. People write stories, post pictures, and upload videos online, and that can make the legal landscape of online content both varied and complex. Bloggers in particular should be aware of copyright for two reasons…. Read More »
Intellectual Property Protection for Restaurants
Restaurant owners often wonder about whether they can use the intellectual property (IP) system to stop competitors from stealing their recipes. The answer, as with so many things in law, is that it is complicated. American IP is divided into four categories: patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. These each protect their own types… Read More »
