Many software vendors (of installed programs or cloud-based SaaS programs), content providers, publishers, website operators, and other creators of other copyrightable materials – whether textual works, images, graphic designs, artwork, etc. – may recall [...]

“America borders on the magnificent: Canada.” So said a very clever tourism ad campaign a few years ago about America’s second largest trading partner.

If your company does business in the U.S., registering your company’s trademarks and service marks in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an essential investment in your business.

Eric Freibrun Receives Martindale-Hubbell Highest Possible 5.0 Peer Rating for Professional Excellence: AV Preeminent

The US-EU Privacy Shield Framework ("Privacy Shield"), recently agreed to in the form of a political agreement between the US and the EU, is intended to serve as a replacement for the US-EU Data Privacy [...]

This article supplements my recently posted article entitled, “11 Key Benefits and Risks of SaaS Contracts.” This time, I’ll address some ways SaaS (“software as a service,” cloud-based) software application providers and their customers can [...]

This post is the first in a two-part series. It will briefly address some of the principal benefits to users of cloud-based, Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, as well as some of the key business and [...]

Presentation to the Association of Corporate Counsel Small Law Department Committee.

Long Arm of the Law Reaches Across the Net -- Sometimes Getting sued is bad enough. It’s expensive and disruptive to your business. Getting sued out-of-state is worse: there are travel costs and potentially much [...]

In May’s Visual Basic Tips & Tricks (See "Court Strikes Down Shrink-Wrap License Agreement"), I had written about how a Wisconsin Federal District Court had sent shock waves throughout the software industry by refusing to [...]

As a natural consequence of its academic and scientific roots, the culture of the Internet revels in the free flow of information and its ready accessibility to anyone seeking it. There seems to have evolved [...]

Most computer users are quite familiar with the so-called "shrink-wrap" license agreement that comes with most software programs for the consumer market. Well, at least most users have seen them, if not actually strained their [...]

"Web, Schmeb," says syndicated computer columnist John Dvorak in March’s issue of PC Computing, summing up his user viewpoint that the World Wide Web is over-hyped, offers scant information of any value, and is too [...]

Whether a business has a site on the World Wide Web is regarded by some as a litmus test for measuring a company’s marketing savvy and technological prowess. For many businesses, it remains to be [...]

Last month’s article discussed some potential areas of legal liability for operators of World Wide Web ("Web") sites, especially as they involved the copying and transmission of someone else’s copyrighted materials over the Internet. The [...]

Business of all sizes are clamoring to take advantage of the Internet by establishing their presence on the World Wide Web. But what are some of the legal risks for businesses that establish a "home [...]

Software developers and their clients who embark on development projects without clear written agreements stating each party’s responsibilities -- and defining the expected results -- have often unwittingly sown the seeds for future conflict. In [...]

I meet many of my clients after they’ve been on one side or the other of a software development project begun, and sometimes completed, without a detailed written agreement. Either the scope of the project [...]

This article is not available online. Please e-mail for copy: eric@freibrunlaw.com or call 847-562-0099. Go back to articles. Attorney Eric Freibrun specializes in Computer law and Intellectual Property protection, providing legal services to information [...]

The owner of a patent to an invention generally has the exclusive right for 17 years from the date the patent issues to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention throughout the United [...]

Assume you're the MIS Director for your company and you've discovered a program that brilliantly solves your most nagging systems dilemma. You've seen the demos and examined the product; there's nothing like it; it has [...]

This article is not available online. Please e-mail for copy: eric@freibrunlaw.com or call 847-562-0099. Go back to articles. Attorney Eric Freibrun specializes in Computer law and Intellectual Property protection, providing legal services to information [...]

Psychiatrists and psychologists can no doubt venture an explanation as to why people say things in e-mail messages and on-line bulletin board postings they wouldn’t dream of saying out loud, stating in a printed memo, [...]

Suppose you’re a software development computer consultant or consulting firm and your Fortune 500 client asks you to design and code a customized software system. The client’s goal is to achieve business nirvana: the sustainable [...]

People talk a lot in the information technology business about "intellectual property rights." But what are they? How do they apply to software technology? Why should you protect them? How do you protect them? Intellectual [...]

Apart from overcoming daunting software development challenges, creators of multimedia works must maneuver through a labyrinth of third party intellectual property and other legal rights relating to the content they may wish to include in [...]

Is the day finally at hand when we will be able to view these two words without a "v." separating them? Perhaps, at least with respect to the $5.5 billion lawsuit filed in 1988 by [...]

This article is not available online. Please e-mail for copy: eric@freibrunlaw.com or call 847-562-0099. Go back to articles. Attorney Eric Freibrun specializes in Computer law and Intellectual Property protection, providing legal services to information [...]

Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, two attorneys practicing law in Phoenix, are conceivably among the two most reviled dwellers of cyberspace. A few months ago, the husband and wife law firm of Canter & Siegel [...]

Suppose you work for a large company that has an internal electronic mail (e-mail) system. Suppose further that, in the grand tradition, your relationship with your supervisor is seriously suboptimal. To amuse yourself and your [...]

This article is not available online. Please e-mail for copy: eric@freibrunlaw.com or call 847-562-0099. Go back to articles. Attorney Eric Freibrun specializes in Computer law and Intellectual Property protection, providing legal services to information [...]

What do the formula for Coca-Cola and the source code to Microsoft Word have in common? They’re both trade secrets, immensely valuable to their owners because they’re kept secret and unavailable to their competitors. Consider [...]

This article is not available online. Please e-mail for copy: eric@freibrunlaw.com or call 847-562-0099. Go back to articles. Attorney Eric Freibrun specializes in Computer law and Intellectual Property protection, providing legal services to information [...]

Congratulations. The program you’ve just finished developing is destined to make you rich, famous, happy, and more attractive to the opposite sex (hard to imagine, isn’t it?). Now that the programming is done, you’ve got [...]

This article is not available online. Please e-mail for copy: eric@freibrunlaw.com or call 847-562-0099. Go back to articles. Attorney Eric Freibrun specializes in Computer law and Intellectual Property protection, providing legal services to information [...]

"Is it real or is it Memorex?" On November 12, 1993, the New York Times reported that the owner of the trademark rights to the term "Memorex," Tandy Corp., will sell the name to Hong-Kong [...]

The Software Publishers Association (SPA), probably the leading international trade association for the PC software industry (its annual meeting was held in Chicago this October), believes that in 1990 alone, the software industry lost $2.4 [...]

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the exchange and conduct of routine business transactions in a computer-processable electronic format. Typical applications include purchase orders, acknowledgments, pricing schedules, order status inquiries, shipping and receiving scheduling and confirmation, [...]

Suppose a computer programmer is hired by a local pet shop to develop a custom inventory feeding management system. The programmer has got his own business: he's either a sole proprietor, Subchapter S corporation or [...]

"I'm paying you to develop this system and I don't own it all?" Software developers/system integrators often hear this question from their clients for whom they develop large-scale custom computer systems. But the issues of [...]