Posts under ‘hybrid lawyers’

Since the release of the latest generation of consoles, the gaming industry has undergone considerable growth.  No longer seen as a niche, antisocial pastime, the marketing strategies and innovative approaches to game design employed by companies like Nintendo have brought Gaming into the mainstream.  Platforms such as the Wii, and the DS, have spawned a [...]

The popular social networking site Facebook, valued in the billions of dollars, is facing legal action brought by a plaintiff who claims to be entitled to the lion’s share of the business.  The claim alleges that Paul Ceglia paid Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to develop the site in exchange for $1,000.  The contractual agreement which [...]

In view of the controversy surrounding not only its contents, but the way in which it was passed, we had written on the recent Digital Economy Act in an earlier post.  In this post I would like to focus not on the broader policy considerations that have been dominating discussion, but on some of the [...]

Before considering what start ups require from their lawyers, it’s worth remembering that many businesses tend to change radically in the early years.  A few years after starting up, they may look nothing like their initial manifestation. This is because it’s common for new businesses to not know what it is exactly that they do, [...]

Last week nine websites that allowed people to download or stream TV programmes and films for free were closed down (see here), their domains seized by the US federal government.  These sites included tvshack.net, Movies-Links.tv, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.coms along with five others. These sites were  targeted as part of a new initiative, aimed at combating Internet [...]

In business, as in life, we are constantly assessing and managing risks.  One of the most important risks to avoid is that of choosing your brand name without doing some very careful searches.  I know this from personal experience. When I started up my law firm I named it A1 Law, having done a brief [...]

By facilitating the dissemination of information to an extent far beyond any technology that has come before it, the Internet has enabled businesses to reach a global market more easily than ever before, given rise to the phenomenon of social networking, provided instant, easy access to knowledge and experience in every field, and turned connected [...]

Last week I suggested questions to ask your business lawyer.  But let’s accept it – legal isn’t as much fun as working in your business, or marketing it.  Legal stuff just isn’t sexy. So, if like millions of other entrepreneurs, you are tempted to ignore the legal stuff, or to write it off as a [...]

If you are starting up in business, getting the right legal help can be a key to success – especially if you are a creative business.  An effective Intellectual Property strategy to properly structure your IP rights from the beginning really does make a difference to the value of your business as it grows. I [...]

In the early days of the internet when the web was like a small village which has just  one bread shop, one toy shop or one other type of store, it was understandable that businesses were drawn to names like toys.com or books.com or hotels.com as business names not just as domain names.  But with [...]