The Foundry Law Blog

Can you Trademark a Hashtag? When Your ™ is a #hashtag

It may go without saying, but #hashtags are a vital part of attracting the right eyes to your social media marketing efforts. However, what happens when your #hashtag becomes associated with your particular brand of goods or services? Is it now a trademark? Can (and should) you obtain federal trademark protection for your mark? This […]

What Makes a Good Privacy Notice?

A “Privacy Policy” commonly refers to what is technically a business’ “Privacy Statement” or “Privacy Notice”. The policy is made up of the internal and external protocols, rules, guidelines and steps that a business takes regarding the collection, use, storage and destruction of personally identifying information (PII) and non-personal (aka. “technical”) information. Businesses put a […]

Web Scraping: Pitfalls and Proactive Best Practices

If your business relies on insights from reviews, comments or other aggregated data, chances are that you are tempted to engage in a little (or a lot of) web scraping. Web scraping is essentially conducting automatic data extraction from one website, for use by a different party. It’s sometimes referred to as “web harvesting” or […]

Coping with COPPA: Protecting Children’s Online Privacy

What is COPPA? In today’s cyber world, security and privacy concerns are paramount. This rings especially true for parents seeking to safeguard their child’s online identity. Lawmakers addressed parents’ concerns by creating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”). Enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), COPPA applies to websites and “online services” […]

5 Reasons to Work with Foundry, So That Foundry Can Work for You

Recently, I received an email from an existing client. They had interviewed several law firms including several larger ones before deciding to engage with Foundry. They appreciated our experience and approach. They wrote to let me know that their investors have expressed a preference that they work with a larger, more established law firm. This […]

Copyright & Copywrong: What are Derivative and Transformative Works?

Recently, we’ve been asked several times about the nature of a certain work as it relates to copyright infringement.   “Is my work a derivative of theirs? I should be fine, right?” “Sure, I incorporate some of their copyrighted work, but mine is transformative enough, so I’m good, right?”   As with most gray areas, […]