Workplace Speech & the First Amendment

Your employee says something on social media that negatively impacts your business.  Can you fire them?  A common misconception is that the First Amendment protects all employee workplace speech.  It does not.

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Domain Names & Trademarks

A domain name is not a trademark, and the interplay between Internet domain names and marks can be confusing.  This confusion routinely leads to disputes.  Registering a domain name, in itself, does not grant trademark rights.

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Employer's Summary of Florida Medical Marijuana Law

If your Florida-based employees are smoking marijuana in the office, normally that constitutes grounds for termination. But, does Florida's new marijuana statute change this analysis to allow employees to use medical marijuana in a workplace that has a strict drug-free policy?

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Copyright Haiku: Original Work

Original work
Five, seven, and then five more
We own this haiku

Confused by our original work? It illustrates how copyright protection applies when you create an original work, as opposed to when you register a copyright.

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Defense of Trade Secrets Act (DTSA): Revisit Confidentiality Agreements

If your company's standard confidentiality agreements were created prior to 2016, you may be unable to take advantage of what Forbes once called the biggest IP development in years.  Until 2016, there were no federal trade secret protection laws. Rather, trade secret protection fell entirely under the ambit of state law. This changed in 2016 with the passage of the DTSA, a United States federal law that allows an owner of a trade secret to sue in federal court when its trade secrets have been misappropriated. The law also grants legal immunity to corporate whistleblowers.

Read more: Defense of Trade Secrets Act (DTSA): Revisit Confidentiality Agreements

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