Maryland Smoking Ban Law

Maryland's new law (The Clean Indoor Act of 2007) banning smoking in indoor public areas goes into effect this Friday. See articles from the Sun, the Baltimore Business Journal, and the Gazette.

Report On Identity Theft

The Maryland Task Force to study Identity Theft recent published it's report. Over 230 pages, the report recommends, among other things, that the penalties for felony identity theft be increased, that the State ban credit card skimming devices, and that the State should enact legislation to enable a court to order the forfeiture of all property of a criminal convicted of identity theft obtained from the crime.

New Maryland Rules Now Free Online

As an update to my previous post, both the Lexis and West free versions of the Maryland Rules are now fully up to date to reflect the most recent changes. (Thanks to Andy Zimmerman for this catch).

Monitoring New Maryland Bills

One option for keeping current with legislation introduced into the ’08 Session is by reading blogs which cover the Session. There are at least four blogs dedicated to legal coverage of this year’s legislative session: The Maryland Chamber Blog, The Daily Record: Eye On Annapolis Blog, The Baltimore Sun’s The Session Blog, and The Maryland Association of CPA’s Legislative Insider. Another way to stay current, is by searching for bills on specific subjects using the Maryland General Assembly’s website. For more on how to do this, see this previous posting.

MD Code Annotations Free Online?

Many of you know that one of the major benefits of commercial publications of state statutes is the inclusion of case annotations which help clarify the statutory text. I was recently on the site for the Oregon State Legislature and noticed something I've never seen elsewhere: annotations to state statutes. Might this be something that the Maryland legislature (Department of Legislative Services, perhaps?) would consider?

Technology Transfer Database

InvenioIP, developed by the University of Maryland with a grant from the Maryland Technology Development Corp., provides a database of technologies created in the academic sphere and available for commercialization. You can search either by institution or by keyword. The site currently has 4 institutions signed up listing over 1900 entries. See this Washington Business Journal article for more info.

New Maryland Rules

If you've received new volumes of the Maryland Rules, you might think you're using the most current version of the Rules. You're not. The Rules were modified subsequent to the books being published. As a result, the volumes are only current through Nov. 1, '07 and don't include the most recent Rules Order (filed on Dec. 4) which updated the Rules. Generally, the online version of the Rules is more up to date than the print version. In this case, though, that is also not the case. The free version of the MD Rules (provided by Lexis) is still not up to date. I spoke to one of the editors and was told this should be updated soon. Pocket parts for the print volumes only come out in June.