Partner Reid Wittliff recently taught two classes focused on technology law. On April 5, Reid taught an eDiscovery and Digital Forensics lecture to the University of Texas School of Law Technology in Litigation class. The presentation focused on the effective use of discovery to obtain digital evidence and the process digital forensics examiners use to identify, capture, preserver and present digital evidence in litigation.
Partners Ryan Botkin and Karen Vladeck will present at the Austin Bar Association’s Annual Bench Bar Conference on April 13, 2018. The Bench Bar Conference is one of the bar’s biggest annual events, which will be held at the Eilan Hotel in San Antonio.
As an employment lawyer, I often see provisions in employee handbooks that say something along the lines of: “Discussing pay and other confidential terms of employment with your co-workers is prohibited.” This type of clause — or anything that prohibits your employees from discussing the terms and conditions of their employment — is prohibited under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
Wittliff Cutter Austin is pleased to announce that Partner Karen Vladeck has been named a Texas Super Lawyers Rising Star for 2018.
On February 16, 2018, the Austin City Council passed a long-anticipated ordinance that requires private companies with employees in Austin to provide paid sick leave. The ordinance goes into effect on October 1, 2018 for all employers with six or more employees within the City and on October 1, 2020 for all employers with five or fewer employees. The law only applies to W-2 employees and does not apply to Independent Contractors.
Discovery of metadata – data about data – is becoming increasingly important in litigation. This is because metadata may be able to shed light on the who, what, when and where of digital evidence as metadata contains wide ranging information about digital files.
Revised Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) entitled “Failure to Preserve Electronically Stored Information” was included in the package of rules the US Supreme Court recently transmitted to Congress. If Congress does not act, the rule will become effective on December 1, 2015. The chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Judge David Campbell, described the task of drafting this rule as “the most challenging task any of us on the committee have ever undertaken.”
It has been almost five years since the Texas Legislature enacted an anti-botnet law, Texas Business & Commerce Code § 324.055, to combat botnets on the Internet. But as of the date of this writing, there are no reported Texas cases interpreting the law, and botnets continue to be as big an online scourge as ever.
For affiliate marketers, the mobile channel promises to engage consumers like never before. With a wide variety of ad units, tracking and targeting technologies, and network marketing models, mobile has the potential to dramatically extend advertisers’ reach and improve ad-spend ROI. However, this opportunity comes with its share of legal risk, especially when working with large mobile ad networks. This article highlights some of the key negotiation points in mobile ad network agreements and provides some tips for minimizing legal risk.
On February 11, 2015, a federal district court in California issued an important ruling on the patent eligibility of certain business processes underlying virtually every online affiliate network.