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May 1998 Newsletter of the Front Range Unix Users Group


Cndnsd Vrsn: 4:00pm Thursday May 7 ACS Rm 123 - Legal Issues

This Month's Meeting: Thursday May 7 4pm: Carl Oppedahl - Legal Issues

Our May meeting will feature a session on legal issues that are near and dear to FRUUG members. Carl Oppedahl, of the Frisco Colorado firm Oppedahl & Larson, will address many of the issues that have been brought up by FRUUG members over the last few months. Carl will talk about intellectual property issues--namely what you give away when you go to work for someone, and what are the issues around software licensing and prohibitions on disassembly and reverse engineering. Carl will talk about the current state of Network Solutions, Inc.'s domain dispute policy, and whether it's still important to obtain a registered trademark on an Internet domain name to keep it safe from others who might like to take it away. Finally, Carl will discuss independent contractor issues, namely what liabilities contractors need to be concerned about, employee vs. independent contractor status, and what to do to enforce the contracts that you sign. The meeting will end with what is sure to be an interesting question-and-answer session.

Mr. Oppedahl is a programmer himself, and has been technically trained in physics, electrical engineering, mathematics, and software engineering. This, plus his law degree from Harvard Law School, has helped to put him at the forefront of computer software and Internet litigation. Carl represented Road Runner Computer Systems in a dispute in which Network Solutions, Inc. wanted to cut off use of their domain name and give it to one of the many trademark owners of the term "Road Runner." This was the first case of its kind, and Road Runner Computer Systems prevailed. Mr. Oppedahl recently litigated a case in which three different Web sites used his law firm's name in their META-tags eight times over 11 different pages, presumably to increase the probability that their sites would appear in searches involving Oppedahl's name. Due to Oppedahl's efforts, the offending companies are permanently enjoined from the use of Oppedahl & Larson's law firm name on their Web pages.

For those wishing to bone-up on trademark and intellecutal property issues before the meeting, refer to Oppedahl & Larson's Web page http://www.patents.com for lots of information.


Meeting Location

The next meeting of the Front Range UNIX Users Group will be in room 123 of the CU Academic Computing Center building at Arapahoe and Marine Streets in Boulder. Marine St intersects Arapahoe at 38th St; the Computing Center is on the southwest corner.


Our Last Meeting

At the last meeting of the Front Range UNIX Users Group Bob Gray did a presentation on Source Code UNIX.

See the previous meetings page on the Fruug web site for more detail.


Upcoming Meetings

Our next meeting will be:

  • On June 17 Kevlin Henney, who did our January talk on Designing Distributed Object Systems with CORBA will be in town again and has offered to talk on Java Patterns.

Contact the FRUUG Executive Committee at fruug at fruug.org if you have other interesting topic ideas or are interested in presenting a fruug talk.


FRUUG Library Notes

This Month Addison Wesley has sent us the Java Developer's Almanac for 1998, covering JDK 1.2.

You may check books out using your business card as your library card; you must be on the membership list to check books out. Books are due at the meeting following the one in which they are checked out. If you don't return your library books by the next meeting, you might find yourself on our overdue book list. We count on you returning books on time so that other members may have the chance to use them as well.


FRUUG CONTACTS

The FRUUG "Executive Committee" is currently:

  • Tom Cargill (cargill at fruug.org, 494-3239), independent consultant
  • Mark Carlson (mac at fruug.org, 682-6473), Red Cape Software
  • Dick Dunn (rcd at fruug.org), Artifex Software Inc.
  • Steve Gaede (gaede at fruug.org, 444-9114), Lone Eagle Systems, Inc
  • Carol Meier (meier at fruug.org, 499-5940), .profile Consulting
  • Bill Meine (wmeine at fruug.org, 796-7100), Sun Microsystems
  • Joe VanAndel (vanandel at fruug.org, 497-2071), NCAR
  • Wally Wedel (wwedel at fruug.org, 804-3073), Sun Microsystems

For FRUUG membership information, more contact information, and an ASCII copy of the most recent meeting announcement, send mail to fruug-info at fruug.org and you'll receive an automatic reply...or point your WWW browser to http://www.fruug.org/fruug

For more FRUUG information, changes, additions, or deletions from the electronic or US Mail mailing list, please send your request to fruug-request at fruug.org.

If there are comments you'd like to send to the entire executive committee, you can reach us with the address: fruug at fruug.org.


Site Map Recruiter Info
February 15, 2009

February 2008: FRUUG Enters Quiescent Phase
After 27 years running, we're suspending operations.

Future Meetings:
None planned

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