Supreme Court decision allows resale of used ink cartridges despite patent holder restriction5/30/2017
A patent holder that restricts the reuse or resale of its printer ink cartridges can’t invoke patent law against a remanufacturing company that violates the restriction, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.
The court ruled that Lexmark International’s patent rights are exhausted with its first sale of the cartridges, despite restrictions it tried to impose. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the opinion (PDF), joined in full by six justices. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch didn’t participate in the case. The court ruled in Lexmark’s infringement suit against Impression Products for refurbishing and reselling Lexmark cartridges. Read Entire Article: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_decision_allows_resale_of_used_ink_cartridges_despite_patent "Does It Matter How I Pay?Jessie Cheng, Alaina Gimbert, Joe Torregrossa
Introduction There seemingly are lots of new ways to make payments today. New apps for smart phones, new peer-to-peer payment networks, new currencies, and new ledger systems offer to meet the needs of U.S. consumers and businesses in ways that legacy payment methods do not. Many of these new ways to pay have improved end-user experience by providing more convenient or intuitive ways to initiate payments through legacy systems (such as the ability to accept card payments through a device that connects to a phone). In other cases, the underlying payment system through which payments are made is new (such as the ability to pay someone instantly with virtual currency through a distributed ledger system). It does matter how you pay; however, the part that matters—from a legal perspective—is not the means of initiation (i.e., payment via mobile app) or infrastructure (i.e., blockchain), but rather who is providing the payment service to the payor and payee and the characteristics of the payment service. This article’s focus is how payment-system and consumer-protection laws apply (or do not apply) to some of the new ways to pay. It should be noted that there are other important legal and regulatory frameworks that apply to payments, such as financial privacy, cyber and information security, Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering, and economic sanctions, all of which are beyond the scope of this article." Read Entire Article: https://www.americanbar.org/publications/blt/2017/05/08_cheng.html Face-to-face, a human and a chimpanzee are easy to tell apart. The two species share a common primate ancestor, but over millions of years, their characteristics have morphed into easily distinguishable features. Chimps developed prominent brow ridges, flat noses, low-crowned heads and protruding muzzles. Human noses jut from relatively flat faces under high-domed crowns.
Those facial features diverged with the help of genetic parasites, mobile bits of genetic material that insert themselves into their hosts’ DNA. These parasites go by many names, including “jumping genes,” “transposable elements” and “transposons.” Some are relics of former viruses assimilated into a host’s genome, or genetic instruction book. Others are self-perpetuating pieces of genetic material whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time. Read entire article: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jumping-genes-play-big-role-what-makes-us-human The legal industry is becoming digitized. What does that mean? Digitization is a common term lacking a uniform definition. It is often used to describe a suite of IT assets-- networks servers, software, the cloud, and other tools. IT is an essential element, certainly, but digitization is much more than the transition from paper to electronic communication. It is the process—enhanced by technology—of reimagining the delivery of goods and services and creating new business models and structures from which to manage them. Digitization is the interplay of tools, tasks, resources—human and technological—process, and models designed to better serve customers and to provide 24/7/365 connectivity between provider and client.
Read Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcohen1/2017/05/21/legal-delivery-is-becoming-digitized-what-does-that-mean/#2011e82b4e62 Most of don't know a lot about the law of wills, trusts, or probate--after all, they're topics none of us really want to deal with. But we should all know the basics, and we should know enough to recognize common myths when we run across them. Here are a few misconceptions that keep coming around.
1. If someone dies without a will, the state gets everything.There are lots of reasons to write a will, but worrying about the state snatching your family’s inheritance is not one of them. If you die without a valid will (the legal term for this is dying “intestate”), then state law kicks in. Every state has its own rules for who inherits what. Generally, your spouse and children are first in line to inherit. The rules vary from state to state, however; in some states, a surviving spouse and minor children share the deceased parent’s assets. (And there’s a good reason to write a will: you don’t want your eight-year-old to inherit a quarter of your bank accounts, do you?) So do assets ever go to the state? Yes, but only when no relatives can be found. As long as your personal representative (the person in charge of wrapping up your estate) can turn up your uncle’s long-lost grandchild, the state won’t get your money. The term for this is called “escheat,” and there’s a reason you’ve probably never heard that word—escheat is very rare. Tip: Write your will! Even if the state won’t get your money, you still want to decide who does—so don’t leave that decision up to state law. Making a will is easy, and it doesn’t cost a lot. Read Article: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/five-myths-about-wills-probate.html A helpful article with advice on keeping electronic information safe when traveling abroad.5/25/2017
Traveling with technology is always a little daunting, but it doesn’t look like it’s getting any easier. Whether it’s a ban on electronic devices like laptops when flying to certain countries, heightened screening procedures that require the removal of nearly all electronics from your bags, or border patrol agents demanding your personal information to search your phone, taking proper steps to secure your personal data has never been more important.
Lucky for you, it’s also never been more convenient to secure your digital info. Apps are freely available that let you mask your most important information; privacy-centered operating systems can protect your browsing habits; and ditching your data temporarily is as simple as using a web app. Read Entire Article: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-your-data-safe-when-traveling-abroad-1795545604 HOUSTON - Have you seen this story about a woman auctioning off a bag once used by NASA to collect moon rocks from Apollo 11? It could sell for millions after she paid less than $1,000 for it, but she’s only allowed to sell it now after a legal fight with NASA.
So, is it legal to sell space memorabilia? Our Verify team did some digging to find out. President Barack Obama in 2012 signed a bill granting astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions ownership of artifacts they kept. But here’s the catch: That law says they can only keep items considered disposable, like a toothbrush, checklist or something that was supposed to be abandoned with the lunar module on the moon. Read Article: http://www.khou.com/news/local/verify/verify-is-it-legal-to-sell-space-memorabilia/442665626 Many entrepreneurs, seeking to avoid the burdens of legal fees, avoid retaining counsel until the emergence of a tangible predicament. However, countless stories prove the opposite approach to be more rational: a strong legal foundation can prove to be an indispensable asset from inception to exit.
Read Entire Article: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/288996 A fascinating article about a new technology which uses modified bacteria to find buried landmines.5/22/2017
Landmines are explosive wartime weapons. People bury them or leave them on the ground for their enemies to step on or drive over. Yet once peacetime arrives, some of these buried bombs may remain behind. They’re often in empty fields, where they can maim or kill innocent civilians. But a new technology can make it easy to find landmines — even from a safe distance. And this might let bomb crews disarm these weapons before someone gets hurt.
Read Article: https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/tweaked-germs-glow-pinpoint-buried-landmines TO WHOM THIS IS INTENDED:
Professional lawyers already know this material. They might want however to use it as a handy reference to give to those who, lacking their professional expertise, could still benefit from accessing background information on their own time, as long as it is easily found. The intended target audience is all those whose occupation is anything but law. It includes students, the activists who fight for their cause without the benefit of a law degree, and people engaged in business, especially those whose responsibilities face the liabilities and vulnerabilities of the information age, be they for example managers, computer engineers or human resources experts. Sooner or later such a layman will need, in the ordinary course of business, to speak to a lawyer to verify whether some action is either mandated or forbidden by law or to work with a lawyer in multi-disciplinary team assignments. One approach is to consider law and lawyers as some consider their car engines, i.e. black boxes best dealt with by expert mechanics. It pays however to be able to speak the language of the expert, either to discuss the symptoms or to understand the nature of the work proposed and eventually billed. Becoming able to communicate intelligently with a lawyer has a downside. By robbing the law of part of its mystery, some laymen might be tempted to play the lawyer. Having a loaded firearm in one's hands does not make one a good hunter, however, and can lead to very unfortunate consequences to self and neighbor. Self-lawyering is strongly discouraged for the same reason. Another important argument for learning more about the law is to be able to weave its threads into the very fabric of business planning. In the healthcare industry for example, an executive who ignores privacy mandates as he or she contemplates or specifies a new process involving patient data might waste significant resources until reminded of the requirements needed to ensure HIPAA compliance. Finally it is imperative to understand that law is dynamic. Businesses may be subject to the law but the law is subject to lobbying. It has been said that as MCI battled the AT&T monopoly, it created more economic value by leading to the deregulation of the telephone industry than in deploying new services. One may conclude that it pays to pick a lawyer for CEO but lawyers are not necessarily the best at managing a business. Yet it behooves all CEO's to understand how laws are enacted and enforced if part of the business strategy aims at changing them. What follows applies to the United States. Although many concepts carry to other countries, one must realize actual sources and examples lose most of their validity. Examples have been taken from the lectures on Liabilities and Vulnerabilities in the Information Age. At the elementary level adopted here, there is however a strong consistency within the law of a given country and the reader will have no difficulty to apply this to other areas as long as the objective is to understand how it may be affected by law in the United States. This ability to extrapolate also justifies the emphasis here given to US law over State law. Read Article; http://www.eprivacy.com/lectures/law-for-laymen.html |
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