The Retraining and Notification Act ("WARN" or The Act) creates some uncertainty for employers because it contains two potentially conflicting definitions of the term "mass layoff" ' one that looks to a 30-day period and another that aggregates layoffs over a 90-day period. This article analyzes a recent ruling that addresses the problem.
- August 25, 2008Neil V. McKittrick and Elizabeth L. Schnairsohn
It's been suggested by several readers that our orientation toward professional services marketing, as opposed to product marketing, is a prejudice. Admittedly, it's at least a bias against a pervasive academic view that the techniques of marketing a product apply equally to marketing a professional service. And indeed, the most successful professional services marketers tend to look to other professional services firms for answers and the best ideas, as well as for validation of their own ideas and processes. Still, it would be foolish to automatically preclude any idea that's been forged in a marketplace of ideas. In a rational world, we take ideas from any reasonable place, accept the good ones, and eliminate the ones that are bad or not applicable. That means that are things to be learned by professional services marketers from the Toyotas and Microsofts and Dells of the world.
August 04, 2008Bruce W. MarcusThe latest happenings in the med mal arena.
July 31, 2008ALM Staff | Law Journal Newsletters |In adjusting medical malpractice losses, insurers, attorneys and claim professionals encounter recurring opinions on and challenges to effective claims-handling. Here are four common medical malpractice claim fallacies, and the reasons why they wilt under close scrutiny.
July 31, 2008Kevin M. QuinleyMany law firms are adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs as a means to gaining a competitive advantage over other firms. They are developing and utilizing these programs to promote and advertise yet another dynamic of their organization.
July 31, 2008Elizabeth A. WallThe U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Hall Street Associates, L. L. C. v. Mattel, Inc. had long been anticipated by the litigation and arbitration communities and has been the subject of extensive commentary and debate in the brief period since it was rendered. This article explains why.
July 31, 2008John WilkinsonAfter almost seven years since inception, the lawsuit by adidas against Payless ShoeSource, Inc. ended at the trial level with a jury verdict against Payless in the amount of $305 million. Payless was found guilty of willful federal trademark and trade dress infringement, trademark and trade dress dilution, and state-law unfair and deceptive trade practices as a result of its sale of footwear bearing confusingly similar imitations of adidas's famous Three-Stripe Mark and Superstar Trade Dress.
July 30, 2008Charles H. Hooker III and Sara M. VanderhoffThe latest news from the franchising world.
July 30, 2008ALM Staff | Law Journal Newsletters |In Quanta Computer, many observers believed that the Court would address whether, and to what extent, a party can contractually restrict application of the patent exhaustion doctrine, under which patent rights covering a product are extinguished when the product is sold without restriction. Instead, the Court's decision in Quanta appears to be relatively narrow, confirming that the sale of unpatented components can exhaust a system patent that is substantially, but not completely, embodied by those components, but leaving open the broader question of whether parties can contractually limit application of the patent exhaustion doctrine to the detriment of downstream good faith purchasers.
July 30, 2008Matthew W. Siegal and Kevin C. EckerMedical Services Must Be Legally Rendered to Qualify for Payment
July 30, 2008ALM Staff | Law Journal Newsletters |

