Nearly Over 30 Years Of Representing Businesses And Their Owners
A federal district court judge has struck down California’s AB 1687, a law which forbade a popular film industry website from publishing certain truthful age-related information about actors, finding it in violation of the First Amendment. In 2016, IMDb.com, Inc. sued the State of California to challenge the constitutionality of the law. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and…
A new article titled “‘Worst of Both Worlds’ FOSTA Signed Into Law, Completing Section 230’s Evisceration” was just posted to law professor Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog. Eric’s post is well worth reading in full. Eric notes that major services, including Google and Microsoft, are taking steps to ban legal content in the aftermath of FOSTA’s passage. Eric…
“The Office of Environmental Health HazardAssessment has adopted a No Significant Risk Level of 1100 micrograms per day forglyphosate. This means that exposures to glyphosate below 1100micrograms per day are not considered a significant risk of cancer for purposes of Proposition 65 and would not require a warning. Safe-harbor levels help businesses determine when a warning is required for exposures…
My 200th United States patent issued today, titled Device Power and Resource Management. According to data that I analyzed in the blog post I made when I received my 100th issued patent, there are well under 1,000 people in the world with that many issued patents. I know the patent system from a unique vantage point as a Harvard-trained attorney, prolific inventor,…
A Superior Court Judge in the latest in a series of Prop 65 cases involving coffee industry has tentatively ruled that the Prop 65 warnings are required. CERT v. Starbucks.( LA Ct. NO. BC435759). The chemical at issue, Acrylamide, is formed in coffee beans during the roasting process and is then introduced into coffee itself when the coffee is brewed.…
Typically, the two most concerning provisions of cross border agreements is the arbitration and termination provisions. Often times, these agreements are not well thought out and disputes as to their content and enforceability are disputed. With regard to arbitration provisions, parties should consider whether arbitration is preferred rather than resolving disputes in court. When permitting arbitration, parties should consider whether…
Olivia de Havilland will celebrate her 102nd birthday on July 1. She was famous as an actor, starring in such films as Gone With the Wind and winning two Academy Awards (losing a third one to her sister, Joan Fontaine). Among lawyers, though, she was perhaps most famous for her role as the plaintiff in de Havilland v. Warner Bros. …
This morning, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals revived the long-running case of Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC. in a 56-page ruling. The ruling is particularly important to programmers, as it holds that Google’s copying of the declaring code and structure, sequence, and organization (“SSO”)* of an Oracle-owned Application Programming Interface, or “API”, is not fair use as a…
After a massive dispute, streaming services will now be required to pay more for the music they play. The Copyright Royalty Board ruled to increase royalty payments to songwriters and music publishers from music streaming companies by 43.8 percent (they go into effect for interactive streaming and limited download services for the years 2018-2022). This jump is the biggest rate…
Read the article here. This memorandum addresses AB 617 Garcia (the Community Air Protection Program), Chapter 136, Statutes of 2017. There is also a short discussion of the recently released (2/7/2018) California Air Resources Board (“CARB”) “Concept Paper” and the accompanying “Draft Process and Criteria for 2018 Community Selections.” I. Summary AB 617 was approved by the California legislature in…