Monday 31 August 2009

Welcome Guest Blogger, Attorney Claire Wudowsky

So my blog’s been suffering from needs a refresh, needs my attention, needs content syndrome, and I’ve been feeling really guilty about that. Fortunately, my good friend and IP attorney Claire Wudowsky has offered to step in from time to time with articles related to IP issues and the Web.

An area that clearly needs attention, here’s what Claire has been thinking:

“Hi, I’m Claire Wudowsky, Mols and I have spoken about me guest blogging on her site for a while, but every time I get started, something holds me back and I cannot finish. Maybe I am over thinking this, I do not know.

I am an Intellectual Property attorney and I have a pretty strong background in computers and online issues and technology – as Molly and I have been working online since before Al Gore invented the Internet (around 1989 or 1990). Do you remember GEnie? It was a bulletin board service (yes a BBS) operated by GE. It was a consumer service that piggy backed on their b-2-b service. Molly and I both ran forums on GEnie (we were called “Sysops” and the forums were called “Roundtables”) – in fact, that is where we met.

Molly helped me set up a site where I could blog about legal issues: Wudowsky.com. However, I got spooked after going to a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) program, where they warned us about the legal liability inherent in the blogging culture. It seems legal malpractice insurers worry that blog readers develop personal relationships with the blogger and the readers might not realize that the blogger isn’t speaking directly to each of them. So, when the reader reads a blog, he/she might rely on the legal information within and will not heed the warning that the following is not legal advise and further that the reader and the blogger have not entered into a lawyer/client relationship. This then leads to the reader relying to his/her detriment on a legal blog – which results in him/her feeling indignant and suing the legal blogger.

This caused me to become quite conflicted. I enjoy writing and reading blogs (I have one for a charity program run by a friend and I) and I believe blogging would definitely help me to grow my practice, but every time I tried to write a legal blog post, I worried that someone would sue me for it! I think you can all see how this might lead to some severe writers block.

I have decided, however, that readers of Molly’s blog a) have a relationship with her, not with me and b) are more intelligent and realistic than the average blog reader. So – I am dipping my big toe into this part of the blogosphere and offering up this post as my first guest post for Molly (furthermore, I am pretty sure no one can sue me for this one )

As I said earlier, I am an Intellectual Property attorney. I practice in the areas of trademark, copyright, computer (including open source) and online law. However, I am not a Patent attorney so I cannot really speak to the many current computer patent issues.

My next post here will be an IP law related post. If any of you have an issue you would like me to discuss, post your suggestions here.

And now, back to Mols.”

So there you have it! Got questions? Suggestions, the comment floor is yours!

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Posted by:   Molly | 16:35 | Comments (16)