Introducing Italian Technology and Gaming Attorney Giulio Coraggio

I am pleased to introduce Giulio Coraggio, an Italian attorney in DLA Piper's Milan office, who specializes in gaming law, Internet law and technology law issues, and who writes a blog called "GamingTechLAW" (subtitled: "The Blog on Gaming and Technology Law and Whatever Sounds Interesting").

Giulio has written a series of articles for his blog dealing with the legal issues with clauses in outsourcing agreements.  In particular, recently he has written a post on the importance of Intellectual Property clauses that anyone who negotiates or reviews outsourcing agreements should read.

Even though Giulio writes from an Italian law perspective, his advice also is sound for those of us who draft and negotiate these clauses in the United States.  It is interesting that, despite differences in the common law and civil law legal systems, the provisions in these agreements address practically all of the same concepts and issues.

If you enjoy the post on intellectual property clauses, here are links to the other posts in the series so far:

Liability Clauses

Termination Clauses

SLA's and Penalty/Liquidated Damages Clauses

Forum Selection and Applicable Law Clauses

Venture Investment Dollars in RI Companies Fall in First Quarter 2013

Venture capital investments in New England fell to $677 million invested in 88 companies in the first quarter of 2013, according to the MoneyTreeReport by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based on data from Thomson Reuters.  This represents a 22% decline from the fourth quarter of 2012.

Three of those companies are in Rhode Island, netting a total of $20,500,000. However, one long-standing biotechnology company, Nabsys, Inc., received $20,000,000 of those funds.

At the same time, investment levels across the U.S. continue to decline. Nationally, venture capitalists invested $5.9 billion in 863 deals in the first quarter.  This represents a decrease of 12% in dollars and a 15% decrease in deals compared to the fourth quarter of 2012, when $6.7 billion was invested in 1,013 deals.  The Software, Biotechnology and Medical Device sectors once again received the most investment dollars for the quarter.  Investment in Internet companies declined, with only $1.4 billion being invested in 231 deals.

Locally, the three companies to receive investments in the first quarter of 2013 are: 

Absolute Commerce, Inc., of Providence, received an early stage investment of $250,000 from  the State’s Slater Technology Fund.  Absolute Commerce is developing  electronic procurement technology designed to speed the process of integrating suppliers’ product catalogs with buyers’ electronic resource management (ERP) computer systems.

Care Thread, Inc. (formerly called Consano Inc.), of Providence, also received a $250,000 early stage investment from the Slater Fund.  Care Thread delivers a HIPAA-compliant mobile messaging solution that provides every member of a patient’s health care team with real-time information detailing a patient’s status and treatment.

Nabsys,Inc., of Providence, closed a $20,000,000 Series D follow on investment in March.  The financing was led by new investor from Bay City City Capital, with participation from existing investors, including Point Judith Capital and Stat Venture Partners.  The money will be used to support the commercial launch of the company’s positional sequencing platform used in DNA analysis, genome mapping and genome sequencing.

6 New IP Cases Filed in RI in June 2013

There were 10 new intellectual property (patent, trademark and copyright) case filings in the first six months of 2013 at the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island, 6 filings in June alone!  This is a 150% increase over the number of IP cases filings for the first six months of 2012, and an 11% increase over the number of IP case filings for the first 6 months of 2011.

Overall, patent filings lead the way so far in 2013, with 6 new case filings.  There have also been 2 new trademark case filings, and 3 new copyright case filings.  Some of these filings will be highlighted in upcoming blog posts, where we will see if we can determine any reasons for the uptick in filings in the Ocean State.

These numbers only include cases that have been designated in the court's database as a patent, trademark or copyright case. There are other cases pending where the complaint may include trademark or other intellectual property claims, or where intellectual property counterclaims may have been asserted. But unless the case is designated as such in the court's database, we are not counting it here.