In addition to being a trademark geek, I could be accurately accused of also being a tech geek. A “geek” is someone who loves using, and helping other people use, technology to help simplify his or her life. Best Buy, capitalizing on this endearing term for electronic lovers, created the Geek Squad, a tech support service. Their distinctive orange and black cars marked with their trademarked logo can be called out to provide in-home support or they are just a phone call away to help you with your technological needs.

There’s not too many other words other than geek that convey the nerdy type of people who love technology, but Best Buy is taking action against others who use “geek” for this purpose in their slogans.  In a recent lawsuit against Newegg.com, Best Buy claimed trademark infringement over Newegg’s slogan “Geek On,” saying that the similarity between the motto, in addition to using orange and black in their logo, breaches their rights.  And this is neither the first, nor the last, time that Best Buy will sue companies over this issue.

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The yellow fever outbreak of summer 1798 was the worst in Philadelphia’s history. Over 5,000 residents were infected, and nearly 1,300 died, causing even President Washington to flee. On the night of September 1st, 1798, the vault at Carpenter Hall was breached and the then-massive amount of $162,821 went missing. This first bank robbery in the United States, attributed as an “inside job”, ushered in an era of robberies that turned criminals into celebrities. Jesse James, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger have become legends. At present, the risk of yellow fever has been mitigated due to vaccines. The risk of bank vaults being physically robbed similarly has been reduced.

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It has become common practice for lawyers to mine social media pages of parties and witnesses for discovery purposes. The posts and photos may show a party to be lying about the extent of his or her claimed injury or disability, or they could undermine or support other claims. Facebook and other social media sites also have become fertile ground for cutting edge ethical questions posed to state Bar ethics committees.

In a recent ethics opinion issued by the San Diego County Bar Association, a lawyer asked if it was proper to “friend” request high-ranking employees of a company the lawyer was suing on behalf of a former employee pursuing a wrongful discharge case. The lawyer believed that these high-ranking employees were dissatisfied with the company and likely had been posting negative information on their social media pages that were accessible only to those persons who had been accepted as “friends”.

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During the last decade, individuals and business have changed the way they manage their data by moving this data management offsite – otherwise known as cloud computing. This differs from the old model of information management that, more or less, mirrored the pre-computing era, meaning that an employee’s file might be kept in a cabinet in a Human Resources (“HR”) office or stored on a company’s in-house server. With cloud computing, however, that same employee file may be stored hundreds or thousands of miles away from the HR officer who needs to review it – or the IT officer tasked with preserving that data for potential litigation.

As discussed more fully in Rick Bortnick’s prior posts (here and here), cloud computing outsources data and software management, migrating it from the local to the global by providing instant access over the internet. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, cloud computing has five primary characteristics: (1) “on-demand self-service,” or the ability to call up stored data or capabilities as needed; (2) broad network access through a variety of platforms; (3) pooling resources providing “location independence”; (4) “rapid elasticity” in the distribution of computing capabilities, and (5) “measured service,” or service-appropriate control and optimization by the cloud system manager rather than the local user. It is the pooling of resources and the measured service managed by third-parties that pose the greatest risks during e-discovery.
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A: They are some of the Google Search Terms that have brought readers to our site this week.  

A list of this week’s Top Google Search Terms leading to Cyberinquirer, and some other cute cyber-related gags that have qualified for our “Weekend Funnies” post, are set out below. I was flattered to see my name appear on the search list unaccompanied by terms like “lawyer” or “cyber geek” or “unhygenic”.  Here’s the list: Read the rest of this entry »