Despite not being an attorney, I find myself commenting on legal issues from time to time. This is both because I find the law fascinating—yeah, I actually said that—and because being in the business consulting business makes it so that I need to have a layman’s understanding of how the law works in the real world. This dovetails with our Intellectual Property Consulting Services.
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Tag Archives: lawsuit
Business Change: Want to Avoid Lawsuits? STOP TRYING
Posted on July 11, 2012 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 0 Comments
Filed Under: Business Change
So Paul Allen’s NEW Software Patent Lawsuit Says …
Posted on January 5, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 3 Comments
Thanks, John Dvorak. I hadn’t thought of this.
The venerable an oh-so-cranky columnist for PC Magazine has called, as I have for quite a long time, for the abolition of software patents. Welcome aboard my train, John.
But Dvorak has added something: maybe Mr. Allen doesn’t actually want to win this lawsuit at all. Maybe Paul Allen’s only real goal in filing a lawsuit against almost everybody was to show that software patents are a bad idea.
Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization SEO
Honesty: A Business Change That Works
Posted on December 21, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 7 Comments
Last month, a years-old lawsuit against Dell Computers was unsealed. And Dell’s actions as shown in the documents about the suit weren’t pretty.
Big deal. a huge company is less than forthcoming about the way they do business, and skirts honesty issues by never quite lying, but going out of their way to do less than what the swearing-in process in most US-based courts demands.
The words are “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth“. Did you ever ask yourself what that phrase means?
Filed Under: Business Change, Customer Service
When Billionaires Buy Software Patents
Posted on December 14, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 3 Comments
It sucks to be Paul Allen. Bill Gates’ co-founder of Microsoft just had his huge software patent lawsuit against almost everybody in the whole world thrown out of court.
OK, it actually rocks to be Paul Allen; despite having had one failure after another since leaving Microsoft, the guy’s a billionaires dozens of times over and lives like a king. But last week a federal judge dismissed the huge lawsuit Mr. Allen filed a few month back, and the tech-geek-cum-patent-troll is going to have to start over. What a mess.
Filed Under: Business Change
Want to Sell Your Old Software? That May Now Be Illegal.
Posted on September 13, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 6 Comments
When I was in the publishing business, I received an amazing amount of software from companies that wanted me to write about their stuff in IYM Software Review. The pile got huge; it literally lined the walls of a small room in my home, stacked five boxes high all the way around the room.
A time came when I needed to get rid of all those boxes, and I approached a local library about them taking the software off my hands. My idea was that they could create an archive of software development, and be one of the few places in the world where people could come to research that topic.
Filed Under: Business Change, Development
Paul Allen Is A Patent Troll: Why That’s OK
Posted on August 30, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 2 Comments
I’m Old. Sometimes that gets in the way, but mostly it affords me insight and the ability to be pragmatic about some of what happens in front of me while younger eyes might lose track of reality.
Last week, Microsoft founder and gazillionaire Paul Allen filed a lawsuit against . . . well, yikes, against almost everybody. And the lawsuit goes way too far, as do most lawsuits over software patents. But the reaction to that suit has been off the mark. Almost universally, that reaction has been not to the merit of the lawsuit but to Paul Allen’s new career as a patent troll . . . and to how evil a place patent trolls occupy in the business world.
Filed Under: Business Change
Business Change: It’s All About Negotiation, Even in Baseball
Posted on August 23, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 5 Comments
Although I make this point only occasionally, business change is all about negotiation. I opined that Barack Obama is perhaps the best negotiator of all time when he got British Petroleum to volunteer $20 Billion toward a fund that gets them off no hooks legally, and I was more than a little impressed when Pink Floyd told their record company they’d see them on the dark side of the moon.
And now I love The New York Mets.
Filed Under: Business Change
I’ll See You On The Dark Side of The Moon: Pink Floyd Wins!
Posted on March 12, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 11 Comments
How often do I get to write about music, technology, copyrights, business change, and one of the most successful classic albums of all time, all in one post?
The answer is “Once, So Far . . Now“.
Yesterday, Pink Floyd, the late-sixties-and-later concept rock band that gave us Dark Side of The Moon, the album which holds the all-time record for longest run on the Billboard music charts, beat their record label in a lawsuit that could have a huge impact on the way the music business works. It’s a forced business change that could reverberate throughout the digital music business (are you listening, Apple iTunes?).
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Protect Yourself from Facebook
Posted on January 27, 2010 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 2 Comments
I’ve been known to pick on Michael Arrrington. I think he’s a whiny self-important blowhard whose words are often not worth reading. Also, I’ve said as recently as last week that blogging may be in trouble. Today, I wish to compliment Mike, and give you an example of when blogging is the most useful tool anywhere.
A few days ago, Harman Bajwa was quite unpleasantly surprised when he found that Facebook had taken away his page. Why did Facebook do that? Because Harman’s given name matches the name of a big company, and they had claimed that he was violating their trademark.
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Price of Burger King Whopper Jr. : $1. Cost of Lawsuit: Business Change
Posted on November 13, 2009 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 0 Comments
I don’t love fast food, but I have kids who do. Results are as you expect.
But I can fight back in my way: since it all tastes the same to me—and don’t ask me how a McNugget and a Big Mac can taste the same, but they do—at least I can try to make it inexpensive. Thank goodness for that “Dollar Menu”.
So I’ve noticed that Burger King is touting their expanded Dollar Menu, and it includes a double cheeseburger. And I was wondering how that’s possible. It must cost at least that much to make one, right?
Filed Under: Business Change
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