Recently in Software Category

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. 

In this post, guest author Jim Groff of PBWorks describes the benefits of knowledge management systems for law firms, as well as the difficulties some firms have had in convincing their attorneys and staff to adopt knowledge management solutions.  Groff argues that Web 2.0 technologies can increase the adoption of knowledge management systems, and thus the benefit to law firms, by integrating the systems with attorneys' everyday experiences.

Throughout the history of the electronic age, firms have attempted to implement legal knowledgebases.  The promise of a systematic database of the firm's proprietary expertise has always appealed to the partnership, but wave after wave of legal knowledgebases have failed, largely for the simple reason that lawyers didn't use them.

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.

The Wall Street Journal has an article in today's edition that gives a good recap of all the recent antitrust activity and its likely meaning for the technology industry. 

The article mentions that many companies formed their government-relations strategies based on the lax enforcement of the Bush administration.  Those companies are now getting ready to adjust to the new realities of a more active Obama administration. 

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. 

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