It hasn’t happened yet but I am going to try to get a handle on a certain issue before it comes up. One of my favorite gadget sites is DAPreview.net. Today they post about an Apple copycat product the company calls the “Ipod MP4 player” if you can believe it.

Although our event is more about the content that goes on devices rather than the device itself, it’s bound to happen sometime - when one exhibitor’s product infringes on the IP of another. In this case it is a hardware issue, but what about copyrighted content? It’s a discussion I have on my list for my next phone call with my attorney, but I’m wondering what kind of liability a show organizer has in this sort of dispute when both companies purchased exhibit space and one exhibitor claims that another is infringing on their copyright and demands we boot the offending exhibitor or risk a lawsuit.

At the Online Trading Expo I started in 1999, we had situations where an attendee threatened to sue us if we let a certain company exhibit because they stated the exhibitor had ripped them off in some way. Each time, the attendee seemed to disappear when we tried to resolve the issue, so we never got to see how it would play out if the attendee pursued the matter.