Commercial Law

It seems that information flows unabated onto the desktop or into the PDA 24/7. For many years, information was contained by fee-based access to aggregators, like LexisNexis and Westlaw, or obtained through the services of a third party. In the last few years, the governmental units and private data creators have begun to distribute information directly through the Internet. Much property information now comes from freely available, or reasonably priced, sources on the Internet. And it is available 24/7.

Under New York's Family Court Act of 1994, parties may obtain protective orders through Family Court and Integrated Domestic Violence Court only if they are married to or divorced from their alleged abuser, they are blood relatives of their abuser, or are single adults with children in common with their abuser. This means that a lot of people who want to get orders of protection must go to the criminal courts. That might seem fine, except for the fact that the standard of proof for permanent protective orders thus becomes 'beyond a reasonable doubt' rather than 'by a preponderance of the evidence.' In addition, the individual victim loses control of the process by having to involve the police and rely on overworked prosecutors to vigorously pursue the abuser.

The perfume industry is a wealthy and profitable one, generating an ever-increasing turnover worldwide. However, as do all successful industries, it attracts numerous counterfeiters and tempts indelicate competitors to copy successful perfumes. Although perfumes are expensive and sensitive products whose development requires time and sizeable investment, they are, unfortunately, hard to protect against unauthorized copies.

Before the Supreme Court's April 30, 2007 decision in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et al., 127 S.Ct. 1727 (2007) virtually all patent attorneys were on the edge of their seats. The decision was a clear indication that the Supreme Court disfavored the current state of the law that had been developed by the Federal Circuit for determining whether a patent is invalid for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. §103. The Supreme Court pointed to numerous errors in the Federal Circuit decision and characterized as 'rigid,' 'formalistic,' 'narrow,' 'constricted,' and 'flaw[ed]' the Federal Circuit's requirement that there be proof the claimed combination of elements was arrived at due to a teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine features from prior art references. Id. at 1739, 1741-42. Instead, the Supreme Court imposed a more flexible approach that sought to emphasize its earlier decisions on obviousness over tests the Federal Circuit had developed to apply the law set forth in those decisions.

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The trend among states to create a single legally recognizable form for advance directives and for the appointment of the health care guardian to make decisions is certainly a step in the right direction for many patients. Often, individuals do not have an advance directive, and health-care providers have the sometimes challenging task of determining who is the most appropriate decision-maker from among the patient's family or friends. Additionally, when an individual is in a life-threatening situation or becomes terminally ill and unable to communicate his or her own preferences, health-care providers, family and friends must decide whether or not to engage in life sustaining acts that may have been contrary to the individual's wishes. Completion of an advance directive may eliminate some of the confusion and stress that families and health-care providers face when trying to make these difficult health-care decisions.

Author Carol A. Wittenberg, who has served on the Major League Baseball/Players' Association salary arbitration panel for the past eight years, as well as mediating and arbitrating numerous financial disputes in the securities industry, explains the different methods of arbitration that work--and do not work--in the volatile securities industry.

One of the biggest areas of conflict after a lease is signed is the allocation of construction responsibility between the landlord and the tenant, but many of these problems are easily avoided by careful drafting and use of terminology at both the letter of intent and lease negotiation phases. Often, especially in the letter of intent, parties use terms that each thinks is perfectly clear, but actually mean different things to each of them. Below are some suggestions for how to handle these issues effectively.