Archive by Author

Bilski Haiku

Lots of great blow-by-blow analysis out there regarding Monday’s long-awaited U.S. Supreme Court decision on the extent to which software and business methods qualify for patent protection.

Here it is as a haiku.

Nine, robed black, have kept
The path to patents lit, for
Software and methods.

Be at peace.

Jet Blues…

Dear JetBlue,

At the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, just over the San Bruno hills from the Silicon Valley, they have a guy come out and play “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes every night for the guests who are watching the sun set over the Pacific. It is a moment that is unexpected and unforgettable. [...]

Designing for the Future

Remarks delivered to open the Internet Technology Summit, Orlando, 22 June 2010.

It is human nature to root for the underdog. Make no mistake, we loves us some winners, but we adores us some winners when they come from behind.

May 26, 2010, was a momentous day for come-from-behind winners.

For example, on the Fox network, a [...]

Audit your IP Portfolio or Face Certain Doom

You are living every entrepreneur’s dream. After years of sleepless nights sweating for equity, you are preparing to cash out. Your startup company has become an acquisition target. After several rounds of negotiations, a strategic partner offers to buy your company for a whopping $100 million. You’ll finally get a good night’s sleep.

You are [...]

Attorney 2.0 on Marketing 2.0

I’ve been asked to speak on social media marketing more often than any other subject lately, so I though it would be timely to blog (with permission) this excerpt from Bernie Borges’s awesome book, Marketing 2.0, available at Amazon.

See if you can tell which of my own rules I almost but not quite constantly fail [...]

Should Lawyers Use the Cloud?

A hot topic at the bar nowadays is whether lawyers should use the cloud to run their practice. The North Carolina bar is planning a formal ethics opinion on the subject. What do you think?

Are You a Lawyer? No? Then Shut Up.

The law can be strange and counterintuitive, and people can hold remarkably – sometimes catastrophically – wrong ideas about it. Here are some:

Myth: Mailing yourself a copy of your work means no one can steal your idea. Sorry. A postmark suggests a tiny bit of proof of genesis, but doesn’t create an [...]

ideas2happy at Tedxtampabay

I presented ideas2happy at TedxTampaBay a couple of weeks ago. My thesis is that obsessive focus on shareholder wealth maximization leads to evil, but that obsessive focus on customer and employee happiness leads to shareholder wealth maximization.

Video here.

Slides here.

I hold up the philosophies of Google (“don’t be evil”) and Zappos (“delivering happiness”) as examples. [...]

A nation adrift

Ever paused to reflect on the odd nature of jurisdiction? The rules that govern your behavior change as you move to different sections of the earth’s crust. Don’t like the rules here? Go stand on another rock.

Land-centric provincialism seems increasingly archaic in the age of the internet, a truly global village where [...]

Top Ten Legal Issues for Startups

The (rather spartan) slides from my recent talk, TOp Ten Legal Issues for Startups, are here: http://www.slideshare.net/bcjb/top-ten-legal-issues-for-startups
Video coming soon.