At our May meeting,
Carl Oppedahl
of the Summit County law firm Oppedahl & Larson
discussed many of the legal issues of which software folks should
be aware. Carl's talk covered copyright and trade secret issues;
trademarks and Internet domain names; as well as some employee
vs. contractor issues. If any one point was driven home the most,
it was the benefits of spending $20 to federally-register copyrights
on your software and Web pages. The benefits include automatic
penalties to infringers under Federal law, and the requirement
that the infringers pay the copyright holder's legal fees.
Much of this information, as well as pointers to the forms that
need to be filled out, are on Oppedahl & Larson's Web site
www.patents.com.
