About William Carleton

Blogger, lawyer, Seattle Dude.

Visual language: Stagecraft in Obama’s Google Hangout

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The President may be a master of the teleprompter, but Google+ hangouts ain’t television. You can replay yesterday’s hangout with Barack Obama here, though sometimes the visual language of a video event reads louder when you freeze the frames. So here is a collage of screenshots from the Valentine’s Day Google hangout with President Obama…. Read More…

Legal lessons from Amazon’s ‘noncompete’ battle with Google

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As Geekwire reported last week, a federal judge in Seattle has pretty much rejected Amazon’s recent attempt to restrict what a former Amazon Web Services sales exec might do in his new job at Google. Amazon had been asking the judge to enforce the full scope of the noncompete covenants that the exec, Daniel Powers,… Read More…

Driverless cars: Looking under the legislation’s hood

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So driverless cars are to be street legal in California! I thought it would be fun to look “under the hood,” so to speak, at the text of the legislation that Governor Jerry Brown signed this week, California Senate Bill 1298. At the outset, we should note that the new law doesn’t exactly legalize the widespread… Read More…

Questions I’d ask before listing a startup on FundersClub

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Every day I engage with at least one person about how startup investing will change because of the JOBS Act. Crowdfunders want to know when they can set up platforms and list deals. Angels want to know if new verification rules will mean no more investing in startups unless they turn over tax returns and personal financial statements…. Read More…

Boss signing in to your Facebook account? There’s a law for that

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Legislatures, state and federal, are starting to react to the trend of employers — at least the creepy employers — requiring job applicants and employees to turn over usernames and passwords for personal social media accounts. Here’s a post from the Goodwin Procter law firm about a new law passed in Maryland and one in… Read More…

Facebook may be discovering that mobile users don’t like ads

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The story is out that Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook’s current priority is improving users’ mobile experience. And I know there has been press about the amendment to Facebook’s SEC filing this week, in anticipation of pricing the IPO, to the effect that Facebook knows it needs to monetize on mobile. But I wonder if the… Read More…

Reality Check: Twitter’s patent pledge not what it seems

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On Twitter’s corporate blog yesterday, the company’s engineering infrastructure VP Adam Messinger wrote that Twitter intends to implement an “Innovator’s Patent Agreement,” or “IPA,” which he characterizes as “a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers.” The way Messinger explains it, Twitter is giving to the inventors it… Read More…

Fiddling with user timelines: A wrong turn for Twitter?

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As social web services proliferate, I’m finding Twitter, my first love, the only one that’s truly become a natural feature of daily life. New pretenders feel fun and flashy at the outset. But, so far, most soon begin to feel like they are up to something, something other than me, my friends and our conversations…. Read More…

The JOBS Act means different things to different people in the startup community

Photo via Bigstock

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act cleared its final legislative hurdle today. It is now on its way to President Obama for signature. The JOBS Act is a big deal for those seeking capital for starting and growing companies. Joe Bartlett, who chairs the advisory council to the public policy committee of the Angel… Read More…

Crowding out angels from startup financings?

Photo via Bigstock

As early as next week, we may know whether Congress will change US securities laws to permit startups to sell stock to the general public over the internet. You know how, today, companies raise money on Kickstarter by offering products, t-shirts, and other bennies? Imagine those same companies selling stock to investors over a Kickstarter-like… Read More…