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The Death Knell of A Noble Profession – Time for the Judiciary to Act
I remember it clearly, first night of Chanukah 2007, the major cuts to Very High Cost Cases were announced, and I arrived home in a funk to the welcoming news that my wife was pregnant with our first child. At that moment I knew that being the breadwinner as a criminal defense barrister (the wig [...]
Berne-ing Up Facebook
If you count yourself amongst the one billion-plus monthly active users of social media juggernaut, Facebook, chances are you have seen your newsfeed inundated with a certain “declaration” as of late. For those not privy, this trend consists of users of the online community copying-and-pasting a short passage into their Facebook statuses in an attempt [...]
Dodd-Frank’s Whistleblower Provisions
On July 21, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law. The Act, which marks the biggest expansion of government power over banking and markets since the Great Depression, sets its aims at remedying the perceived regulatory holes that permitted the financial crisis of the early twenty-first [...]
NCAA Scaping the Wrong Goat
Having grown up in a far off land I have always been slightly bemused by the furor and hype that surrounds US college sports. Maybe that’s because when I played rugby at university in the UK the only people that came to watch a match were the odd hopeful girl, two old men and a [...]
Cost. Quality. Time. Pick 2!
Any owner or developer will tell you that they want their project to be completed quickly, cheaply and to the highest quality. While this may sound good in theory, in the real world it is nothing more than fantasy. Most people are familiar with the game “rock-paper-scissors” and the strategic conundrum it places players in [...]
Hitting Facebook In Its Private Parts
It is not difficult to feel old, from a legal perspective, as one can remember testing the bounds of fingerprinting, skin cell shedding, DNA profiles (and databases, of course) in court. One of the more recent battles has been the use and accuracy of cell site evidence which also has the added benefit of being [...]
You May Be Young… Not For Long
While on a Sunday cruising down I-87, keeping abreast of developments in modern pop music, I was comparing by the track “We are Young” by Fun featuring Janelle Monáe to that of “What Makes You Beautiful” by the Cowellian outfit One Direction. Both, in their own way, fabulous pop songs, the latter being a decent, [...]
Louis Vuitton v. U Penn
Nothing is juicier than the squabbles of the elite. At least that would explain the recent national obsession with Downton Abbey. In keeping with that maxim, a squabble between luxury fashion designer Louis Vuitton (LV) and the University of Pennsylvania caught our eye this week. It started when the Penn Intellectual Property Group—a student club—began [...]
Branding a Name
When you think of New York City icons, who pops to mind? Donald Trump. Fran Lebowitz. Jerry Seinfeld. Woody Allen. A whole list of creative, business and media stars are associated with the city. New York being the legal capital of the world, you can bet that all of these celebrities are heavily invested in [...]
The Constitutionality of a Lie
This blog generally covers issues of intellectual property—one of the strengths of Garson, Segal, Steinmetz, Fladgate. But this week, we take a slight detour as the Supreme Court hears arguments in a really interesting question at the intersection of First Amendment and information law: Can Congress criminalize a lie? In United States vs. Alvarez, the [...]
