Commercial Law

The conventional wisdom is that it costs more to get a new client than to keep an old one. And for once, the conventional wisdom is correct. Yet, many professionals too readily take clients for granted. Or don't look for opportunities to increase revenues from perfectly satisfied clients.

In a decision that could have wide-ranging consequences for secured lenders and the distressed debt market, a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has held that secured creditors do not have an absolute right to credit bid the value of their loans in Chapter 11 plan-based sales of assets.

A growing number of courts have addressed the validity of contracts purportedly created through Web-based transactions. While the judiciary has produced mixed results in this area, a few trends have emerged ' notwithstanding the nuances presented by online transactions.

In 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that state implied-in-fact contract claims weren't preempted by federal copyright law. Grosso v. Miramax Film Corp. The ruling resulted in a predictable increase in idea-submission suits over TV and film productions. But few judicial opinions since have cited Grosso. In June 2010, however, the Ninth Circuit issued two decisions ' with differing results ' that, by also drawing from precedents from decades before, illuminate how a court should consider the elements of an implied-contract case.

From construction contracts, to supply contracts, to equipment leases, franchisors and franchisees might face the problem of litigating numerous legal disputes simultaneously. This, of course, can be devastating for a business, whether big or small. So what can you do to avoid these pitfalls?

Franchisors and franchisees need faster, cheaper, and better ways to resolve disputes. Planned early negotiation processes and early active intervention clauses can help parties and lawyers achieve these goals.

Part One of this series discussed common IP settlement terms that may give rise to antitrust liability and how the analysis of whether a settlement agreement violates the antitrust laws depends upon many factors that are specific to the underlying facts. This second installment addresses recent challenges by the government and private plaintiffs to settlements between brand name and generic drug manufacturers, and how these challenges have further refined the antitrust framework for analyzing patent litigation settlement agreements in the pharmaceutical industry.

Last year, the Southern District of New York reignited the 90-year-old hot news doctrine and applied it in the Internet context. Since that decision, a number of entities have attempted to use the hot news doctrine to prevent the unauthorized use of time-sensitive content, including most recently, financial firms and media outlets attempting to prevent news-oriented Web sites from publishing their well-researched content.