General Counsel to Employees: Think Before You Send
December 10, 2007
Katheryn Hayes Tucker
Fulton County Daily Report
E-discovery rules have caused in-house counsel to take a harder line with some of the e-mails that workers think are private
“Don’t put this in writing, but … ” Those are the opening words of an e-mail that got the writer’s company in legal hot water. And there are plenty more where that came from.
“This is off the record,” started the e-mail that in fact put it all on the record.
How about this one? “We may be in breach of contract, and here’s why.”
These examples of troublesome e-mails general counsel say they’ve run across don’t include the countless off color so-called jokes forwarded to contact lists of colleagues, interested or not, or links to Web sites that are definitely not part of a corporate job description.
Virtual Worlds, Real Litigation
June 1, 2007
Roger Parloff
CNNMoney.com
June 1, 2007 – Though the U.S. Supreme Court cut back this week on Americans’ rights to sue for equal pay in the real-world workplace, our rights to sue for wrongs visited upon our imaginary selves in imaginary game worlds made some modestly countervailing gains.
“This has been one of the most important weeks in US virtual-world law in memory, perhaps ever,” says S. Gregory Boyd, an intellectual property attorney and games law expert at Kenyon & Kenyon.
Thoughts on Music: DRM, iTunes and the iPod
February 16, 2007
by Steve Jobs
www.apple.com
February 6, 2007: With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to “open” the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods. Let’s examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.
US Senate Introduces Strong Privacy Bill
February 8, 2007
by Vidura Panditaratne
Press Esc
February 7, 2007: US Senators yesterday introduced a bill that better protects the privacy of citizens’ personal information in the face of data security breaches across the country.
Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) co-sponsored the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act, which was first introduced in 2005 with co-sponsorship from Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) following serious data breaches at ChoicePoint and LexisNexis.
Senator Specter, who is the Ranking Member on the panel, is co-sponsoring the bill again this Congress.
Since then breaches at several other firms and within state and federal governments have exposed millions of Americans to identity theft by leaking or losing their personal data, which included names, addresses, and sometimes Social Security numbers.
Health Care vs. High-Tech in War over Obvious Patents?
January 14, 2007
by John Timmer
Ars Technica
It’s not often that Science contains an analysis penned by a lawyer. But the lawyer in question, Michael R. Samardzija of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s Intellectual Property office, suggests that the US Supreme Court is weighing an issue that may pit parts of Science’s readership against each other. At issue are cases where a patent covers a development that is obvious, and the analysis suggests that while the health care industry (including biotech) likes the current system, high-tech firms such as chipmakers are finding it a barrier to innovation.
FRCP Amendments: Discovery of Electronically Stored Information
January 3, 2007
By Christy M. Thornton
Lang, Richert and Patch
Introduction
Effective December 1, 2006, amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure place new obligations on attorneys using electronically stored information (“ESI”) in federal courts. The amendments force parties to address, early in the case, issues of how to best preserve, collect, and produce ESI.
The amendments were created in response to recognition that ESI raises different issues from conventional paper discovery. Characterized by an exponentially greater volume than hard copy documents, ESI presents a substantial risk of inadvertent production of privileged material. Preservation of ESI also raises an issue, since computer information, unlike paper, is dynamic; computers continuously overwrite, delete, and change stored information. In addition, ESI may become incomprehensible when separated from the system that created it. In response to these problems, the proposed amendments require counsel to address ESI issues from the outset of litigation.
Federal Court Finds NSA Wiretaps Unconstitutional
August 18, 2006
By Wayne Rash
August 18, 2006
www.eweek.com
A federal judge in Detroit has rejected the Bush administration’s argument that the National Security Agency’s wiretap program, which has been conducted for nearly five years, is allowed by the U.S. Constitution.
In a sharply worded statement that cites precedents from as far back as the late 18th century, and quotes extensively from the Framers of the Constitution, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, said: “We must note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America, and no powers not created by the Constitution.”