The accounting world is getting flatter, and fast.
According to today’s Wall Street Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to move US accounting practices away from GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).
Used widely in the US, GAAP is not an international standard. Firms outside of the US in over 100 countries use standards from [...]

There’s a fascinating discussion over at the AdamsDrafting blog about us lawyers drafting software license agreements, and dissecting the contract language which has evolved and which we routinely use in licensing software.

Here are some of the questions being discussed:

Is a license the entire contract, or is a license a subset of the entire contract, where [...]

William Patry, one of the most well-known and nationally respected copyright practitioners, has explained his reasons for terminating his long-standing Patry Copyright Blog in a final post:
http://williampatry.blogspot.com/
Patry cites the “depressing state of copyright law” and the direction of recent copyright law developments as among his personal and professional reasons for not continuing the blog.
His contributions [...]

Finjan, a data security services firm, reported today that more than 500 megabytes of stolen medical and business data and Social Security Numbers (SSNs) have been found on “crimeservers” in Malaysia and Argentina. The data were stolen from systems for a major airline and a health care provider using widely available hacker toolkits, [...]

A number of news sources and commentators are reporting this week on a University of Washington white paper criticizing the recent development of using automated processes (’bots’ or monitoring agents) against BitTorrent and other heavy bandwidth users to generate automated DMCA takedown demands.  Many takedown demands are based solely on observed patterns of Internet [...]

It was inevitable, and now it’s “official”: the 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment is the new Nigerian scam.
A few of my clients this week reported receiving one or more phishing emails about the 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment from the US government. Then I received one myself this morning. (”Gee, how could the [...]

Here’s a followup to “Trade Secret Claims No Longer Protecting Source Code from Discovery — So How’s Your Code?”:

An Arizona judge just threw out 49 breath tests performed using the Intoxilyzer 9000 by CMI, based on the company’s refusal to make the software source code available under subpoena for inspection by defendants facing prosecution for [...]

WSJ’s Tech Blog recently published a profile of the ‘typical’ tech entrepreneur, based on a survey by the Kauffman Foundation. Here are the typical characteristics:

founded their $1,000,000-plus company, on average, at 39 years of age
more than 90% have completed a college degree
four times as likely than the general public to have attended an Ivy-League [...]

As I reported here, the Michigan film and entertainment industry incentives legislation was fast-tracked and signed by Governor Granholm today (April 8, 2008). Companies can receive incentives such as a 40% tax break and assistance from the state with locations and the use of state resources, in qualifying film and entertainment projects.  Here are the [...]

A package of bills (with broad bipartisan support) was under consideration Tuesday in the Michigan Capitol which will provide business tax incentives to film producers, video game developers, and other entertainment based ventures. The key component of the legislation introduced last week is a 40% business tax break for firms engaged in moviemaking in [...]