Collaborating on documents is a huge part of being a lawyer. Revision after revision is made by a constantly expanding circle of reviewers, all of whom work on their own copies of the document then circulate the file to personal computers, laptops and mobile devices. In all of that, it's easy to lose track of which changes have been accepted and which iteration of the document constitutes the final version.
Many legal document management software solutions exist that claim to solve this problem. So many, in fact, that sifting through all the options and selecting the right one for the situation at hand can be a real chore.
People hoping for a test case for the Gnu Public License (GPL), a common type of license in open source software, will have to wait a little longer.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has settled its lawsuit against networking equipment giant Cisco, so the case won't go to court or establish any kind of legal precedent for the interpretation of the GPL.
An obscure company known as Tune Hunter has sued some big names in technology, including Apple and AT&T, for patent infringement, claiming that their promotion of the Shazam application violates Tune Hunter's patent for a music identification system.
Tune Hunter also sued the company that makes Shazam, as well as Samsung, Amazon.com, Napster, Motorola, Verizon and others.
First they changed it.
And everyone freaked out.
Then they changed it back.
And everyone rejoiced.
Now it looks like they reversed the change for some things, but left the original changes in place for other things.
And everyone was confused.
Cecilia Barnes went through a bad break-up.
After the relationship ended, her former boyfriend created fake profiles for Barnes on Yahoo! websites containing nude and semi-nude photographs and a solicitation for sex. The ex also went on chat rooms posing as Barnes and directed men to these fake profiles, which also contained the contact information for Barnes' work.
Remember the good old days in law school, lugging around piles of huge, heavy casebooks? Remember the multi-colored highlighters stuffed into your backpack, ready to mark important passages?
And, most importantly, remember the light, weightless feeling of your wallet after purchasing said casebooks?
Future students of the law might not share those memories, if Jeff Bezos of Amazon has anything to say about it.
It used to be the case that an airplane flight offered people some time to disconnect from phone calls, emails and all the other forms of communication that dominate modern life.
Those days are rapidly disappearing, however.
