Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Alvin Oga <alvin AT Mail.Linux-Consulting.com>]

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004, James Grimmelmann wrote:

> >This is also wildly out of my area of expertise, but couldn't you sue a 
> >company in a jurisdiction other than the one the company is incorporated 
> >in if the company does business in the jurisdiction you want to sue it in?
> 
> This is true as a general matter.  You can sue a company in the state where 
> it's incorporated, in the state where it has its headquarters, or in any 
> state where it has a substantial business presence.  Having an office with 
> employees in a state is usually enough.

or an office but no employees because everybody is a contractor
or a contractor they hire, but no official offices
( contractor works out of the contractor's office or even their home )

> Having said that much, imposing a choice-of-venue clause in this way might 
> not be legally effective.  If you want to insist that you be sued, if at 
> all, in Santa Clara County, that is more likely to work than insisting that 
> you be allowed to sue them in Santa Clara County.

as the licensor, if they do business with you, you are allowed to sue
them in the county your offices are located .. and if there is only one
office, the defendant has no choice but to show up here in santa clara
county

as the defendant, you go to where you been sued, their state of
incorporation or our state of incorporation

if they have lots of offices, that's another issue

it's a big cloudy issue 

personally, i prefer any disputes to be hammered out in say santa clara
county instead of in delaware or nevada where most corps are incorporated

if they, the sue-happy folks, sue you in timbucktoo county in any-state,
usa, because that's where they reside,  they might win the case by
default because you/we didn't show up in itty-bitty town, usa

> Jurisdiction and choice of forum issues are very complex, not wholly 
> predictable, and almost purely matters for lawyers.

yup

and when talking to lawyers in the past, their first 3 questions was:
        - how much they gonna charge for their legal advice
        - they look for attorney clauses in the legal doc you bring them
        - they look for venue for the legal disputes

which, in turn, seems odd to me that the CC licenses have left off 
2 of the major key issues of a legal document ... venue and attorney 
fees clauses
        - if one were to be an generic, works in every (usa) state
        license, then there still should be a attorney fee clauses
        even if venue was left off

> Usual disclaimers: I speak for myself, and I'm not giving legal advice.

ditto

c ya
alvin