http://arborlaw.biz/blog for entrepreneurs and small business — a legal blog from Arborlaw PLC Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:00:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/08/27/sec-to-move-us-away-from-gaap/ 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 ... http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/08/26/what-is-an-exclusive-software-license/ After hundreds of comments were received asking him to restore the blog archives, William Patry restored the public archives of the Patry Copyright Blog.  Patry's blog contains over 800 articles on copyright case law, copyright legislative developments, and strategic approaches to contemporary copyright-related legal situations.  I highly recommend Patry's blog ... http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/08/20/patry-copyright-blog-archives-are-back-online/ 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 ... http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/08/05/patry-copyright-blog-is-no-more/ Sprint termination fees were found illegal last week by a California court. I'll be watching this case very carefully as it has implications not only for cellphone contracts but also contracts in the general telecommunications industry, and in several other service provider industries. listen Powered by Jott http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/08/02/sprint-termination-fees/ 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 ... http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/06/19/stolen-medical-personal-information-for-sale-offshore/ 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 ... http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/06/10/is-torrenting-the-copyright-equivalent-of-driving-while-black/ 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. ... http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/06/06/its-official-2008-economic-stimulus-payment-is-the-new-phishing-scam/ Document your award submissions with links to relevant materials in the comment section below (Comments on pages rather than blog posts not working in WordPress 2.5 -- sorry!). Submissions for the 2008 Arborlaw PHISHY™ Award will close on December 31, 2008. http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/06/01/arborlaw-phishy-award-submissions-page/ The ABA Journal is reporting another development in attorney-client privilege concerns with the booming legal outsourcing market. Here are the questions: Does the monitoring of cross-border communications by the United States government under the Patriot Act and the Wiretapping Act and the lack of US constitutional protection in foreign countries ... http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2008/05/28/legal-outsourcing-presents-ethical-and-legal-dangers/