Patent Law

How To Avoid Infringing Red Sox Trademarks

Posted on January 13, 2009
Or anybody else's, for that matter. Trademarks: What They Is, What They Ain't Trademarks are important for businesses, but they are not as broad as many people think. I'd be rich if I had a nickel for every time I read a Tweet that said, "ZOMG, I can't believe the smiley face emoticon has been trademarked!" Many [...

How To Twittersquat The Top 100 Brands

Posted on January 08, 2009
A call for the creation of the Uniform Username Dispute Resolution Policy. The Problem Of the top 100 global brands, 93% have had their Twitter usernames taken by somebody else (i.e. Twittersquatted). Twittersquatting, like cybersquatting, is when somebody registers a company's trademark (or a famous person's name) as a Twitter username with the intent of profiting or causing [...

Twitter Follow Fail: Tweeple You Follow vs. Tweets You Actually Read

Posted on January 02, 2009
moar funny pictures

Twitter Near Acton 01720 Or Maynard 01754

Posted on December 21, 2008
Tweeple in MetroWest Massachusetts. I live in Acton (01720) and work in Maynard (01754). This is a list of Twitter folk near:01720 or near:01754. If your profile is protected or if you haven't posted a tweet in the last month or so, then you're not on this list...

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Is FriendFeed Broken?

Posted on December 19, 2008
The Google Reader Notes -> FriendFeed -> Twitter dance is broken. As of 12/15/08, entering a Note into Google Reader -> FriendFeed -> Twitter, resulted in the Note appearing in Twitter (which is good). I entered this in a Google Reader Shared Item Note: Wrong...

651 New Companies Formed In Massachusetts In 11/2008

Posted on December 10, 2008
New Massachusetts startups. Entrepreneurs in Massachusetts formed 651 new companies in November, 2008. That's down 16 percent from the same month in 2007: this year: 651 companies formed 11/2008 last year: 777 companies formed 11/2007 This data is taken from Massachusetts public records and was correct at the time of publishing...

MP3 vs. CD: The Beer Test

Posted on December 07, 2008
Unless you're a dog, a whale, or a computer, you're not going to be able to tell the difference between a good MP3 and CD audio. Think you're an audiophile? I'll bet you beers you can't tell the difference between 256 Kbps VBR MP3s and CD audio in a blind test...

Recursive Blogging FAIL @ThomasCBowen @CThilk @cwcoxjr @rklau @intersectionfail

Posted on December 02, 2008
It took a month, but the intertweets found the limits of Google Reader Shared Items Notes. It's about 64K. Mmkay? About a month ago, Henry, Rick, Thomas, Erik, Chris, and William started having a conversation in Google Reader Shared Items Notes...

Top 10 Google Products You Should Try

Posted on December 01, 2008
You are at a fork in the road. Time to choose between doing things the old way or trying something new. By Erik J. Heels First published 12/1/2008; Law Practice magazine, "nothing.but.net" column; American Bar Association After I graduated from high school, my friend Jon and I flew across the Atlantic with our backpacks and traveled around [...

LinkedIn Punishes Power Users

Posted on December 01, 2008
LinkedIn can't do basic math, thinks that 5/50 equals 5/500. I love LinkedIn, but lately they've been driving me crazy. I got this message recently when I was trying to invite a member of a group that I founded to connect with me: *Please note:* You are now required to enter an email address to send invitations from [...

Rolling Stone Announces More Five-Star Rated Albums And All I Got Was This Lousy Feed

Posted on November 25, 2008
Want to know why the music business is broken? Look at how Rolling Stone Magazine mismanages its most prized asset: five-star reviews. Over the last two months, Rolling Stone Magazine published five-star reviews for three albums. Rolling Stone rating an album five stars is as rare as a four-leaf clover or a Bush apology...

LawLawLaw 2008-11-24

Posted on November 24, 2008
Technology, Law, Baseball, Rock 'n' Roll, Etc. Intro Stuff The opinions expressed in LawLawLaw do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Clock Tower Law Group, its employees, or the author. Action figures sold separately. I read hundreds of sources to compile this LawLawLaw newsletter, my thoughts and observations on trends in technology, law, baseball, and music...

826 New Companies Formed In Massachusetts In 10/2008

Posted on November 24, 2008
New Massachusetts startups. Entrepreneurs in Massachusetts formed 826 new companies in October, 2008. That's down 14 percent from the same month in 2007: this year: 826 companies formed 10/2008 last year: 959 companies formed 10/2007 This data is taken from Massachusetts public records and was correct at the time of publishing...

Dear @LifeHacker, Please Stop Using Ads As Items In Feeds Unless You're @AdFreak.

Posted on November 23, 2008
Agree? Please reblog, reshare, and retweet this. I am not against ads. I am not against ads in feeds. I am against ads as standalone items in feeds. Unless you're @AdFreak and are blogging/Tweeting/sharing about ads. This must be stopped: That is all.

Why Is FEMA Sending Me Direct Mail?

Posted on November 22, 2008
And since when is it FEMA's job to generate business for local insurance agencies? We recently received a piece of direct mail from FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S Department of Homeland Security. Here's most of it: In addition to the three-page letter, there is a six-page color insert (not scanned)...

How To Make Custom 404 Error Pages

Posted on November 21, 2008
Using Google Webmaster tools. Based on this blog post about better 404 pages, I just implemented the Google Webmaster Tools enhanced 404 pages widget to create a custom 404 error page for my blog. It took about 10 minutes. Here's how my generic 404 error page looked before: Here's how it looks now: And here's the results of [...

Ignorance Is Not A Virtue

Posted on November 19, 2008
Technology is good. Computer illiteracy is bad. A dear friend recently sent me an article from Alabama's The Huntsville Times. I think my friend was trying to suggest that too much TV for kids can be a bad thing, which I agree with. But because the article is so painfully misguided, I felt [...

Excerpt Editor + Different Posts Per Page = Better SEO For WordPress

Posted on November 19, 2008
How to avoid duplicate content in WordPress. I assume that most people read this blog via my feed, not via my website. For those that do visit my website, I've just updated my non-permalink pages (tag pages, category pages, monthly archive pages, and home page) to include excerpts of the latest ten posts (per category, [...

Book Review: Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing

Posted on November 18, 2008
By Harry Beckwith. The excellent book Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith makes many great points about service marketing, including that a good solution today is better than a perfect solution tomorrow. A ready-fire-aim approach (implement first, then iterate to fix mistakes) is generally better than a ready-aim-fire approach [...

FreeTrademarksForStartups.com: Free Trademarks For Startups

Posted on November 17, 2008
The best time for entrepreneurs to start a new business is during a recession. Since Barack Obama's election, I have been inspired and motivated to figure out something that I can do to help our struggling economy. Most of my clients are startups...

Madrid Protocol: Affordable International Trademarks For Startups

Posted on November 14, 2008
The Madrid Protocol is a great option for startups who want foreign trademark protection but don't want to file trademarks in separate countries. If you want to have trademarks in the United States and in Europe, then (1) file your trademark application in the US and (2) within 6 months of your US filing file a [...

Book Review: Economics In One Lesson

Posted on November 13, 2008
By Henry Hazlitt. Every politician and business leader should be forced to read and understand Economics in One Lesson. Again and again, the classic mistake is made: pursuing a short-term policy that benefits only a select few at the expense of a long-term policy that could benefit many...

Patriotism vs. Politics

Posted on November 11, 2008
One veteran's thoughts on being patriotic in the face of conflict. How do you maintain your patriotism when surrounded by peers who don't share the same values? How do you work within the system to effect positive change? These were some of my challenges as I served in the Air Force...

Recursive Blogging

Posted on November 06, 2008
In which we learn about the limitations of Google Reader Shared Item Notes. In tribute to my favorite software class at MIT, I have a recursive logo. The logo - an airplane in a circle - appears in the tail of the airplane. So it's a logo in a logo...

My Social Networks

Posted on November 06, 2008
Social networking sites come and go. Here are the ones where I'm currently active. Following up on my post Drawing That Explains Social Networking, here are my current social networks: My Blog http://www.erikjheels.com My personal space on the Net...

The Speech That Sarah Palin Must Give

Posted on November 05, 2008
I'm sorry. Please accept my apology. I apologize for not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is. I apologize for the Katie Couric interview. I apologize for not giving any interviews after that. I apologize for answering real questions with canned talking points...

Drawing That Explains Social Networking

Posted on November 03, 2008
How to visualize social networking. And You May Ask Yourself, How Do I Work This? I wanted to be able to explain to those new to social networking how all of the pieces fit together. Plus with feeds being shared back and forth, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't creating any feed loops or [...

My Google Resume

Posted on October 23, 2008
There's more about your on Google then you'll find on www.google.com. Google's specialized search sites allow you to create a "Google resume" of anyone. I searched a bunch of Google sites about myself (naturally) and found lots of stuff I'd forgotten about...

Ping.fm Is Offline

Posted on October 20, 2008
I just tried to go to ping.fm to update my status on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Plaxo and got this instead: Ouch.

Dear 2008 Red Sox: Thanks For A Great Season

Posted on October 20, 2008
Win or lose, I'm with you every game, every inning. Thanks for a great season. Pundits predicted that the Angels would finally defeat the Red Sox in the ALDS, and they were wrong. Pundits predicted that the Rays would walk all over the Red Sox in the ALCS, and the Sox made a series [...

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