Recent Articles

Strategy at the Edge of Intellectual Property

April 03, 2008 21:03

Imagine working in an industry with no intellectual property protection at all.  Unlike the book, music, and high tech industries, you couldn't use the law to shut down an infringer who was ripping off your products.How would you stay in business?Ask the fashion design business.  That's...

Data Scraping from Web Services

January 07, 2008 23:55

This month's Wired magazine has a perceptive article about so-called "data scraping" or "screen scraping" practices.  It discusses the practical aspects of data scraping (such as IP address banning or blocking as a practical remedy to prevent scraping), use of cease and...

Silicon Valley Micro-Cultures and Industry Clusters

December 21, 2007 17:47

A New York Times article describes where the "niche neighborhoods" and industry clusters are located in Silicon Valley, with web design and online advertising centered in San Francisco, software in the Palo Alto area, and semiconductors, disk drives and and network equipment located in...

Consultants to Help Startups Expand Abroad

November 08, 2007 00:31

Generally, when a small U.S. client tells me that they wish to expand abroad, I think to myself, "that's going to be complicated, time-consuming and expensive."Recognizing the opportunities and challenges of globalization facing startups and other small businesses, the Wall Street Journal...

Business Tips for Providers of User-generated Content

November 02, 2007 00:50

Web sites and other online services containing content submitted by users (also known as user-generated content) are obviously a hot growth area.Not so obvious is the fact that these services depend on a little-known statute to protect their providers from legal liability for copyright...

Short Introduction to Several California Laws that Affect Out-of-State and Foreign Businesses

October 31, 2007 01:11

I've just written and added a new article to my web site, Welcome to California: A Very Short Introduction to Several California Laws that Affect Out-of-State and Foreign Businesses (MS Word file).My resources page contains other articles that I've written.

Virtual Worlds Compared

August 08, 2007 00:01

TechCrunch posted a useful chart comparing all the existing virtual world services, such as Second Life.

The New Micro-Multinationals

July 16, 2007 17:57

A new breed of "micro-multinational" is emerging among the many Web 2.0 social networking startups, as described by The San Jose Mercury News.  A micro-multinational is "a small company that acts big by skillfully using the Internet and other technologies".  Those...

Lawyer Wikis

June 15, 2007 16:09

A colleague of mine, Joel Riff of Riff & Bui, sent me the article Lawyers Collaborate with Wikis from Law.com.Wikis are online collaboration tools that enable multiple users to post articles and to edit one another's postings.  The most famous example is Wikipedia, an online...

Patent Factoids

June 14, 2007 17:07

Some factoids about patents:Typical cost to obtain a U.S. patent: $5,000 to $25,000.  Cost to invalidate a patent: Legal fees average $4.5 million in patent disputes where more than $25 million is at risk.Cost of obtaining a patent versus invalidating one: You do the math.Number of inventions...