Features
The Globalization of Investigations
Over the past several years, the Department of Justice ('DOJ') has expanded its tools and efforts to gather evidence from abroad and reciprocate by helping foreign prosecutors gather evidence in the United States. For a client whose primary presence is in this country, cross-border cooperation among law enforcement organizations raises distinct and difficult issues. An effective defense requires knowledge of treaties and criminal law in two or more jurisdictions, and collaboration among defense counsel in different countries.
Features
Celebrity Name or Likeness
A new department centering on key cases.
Features
Counsel Concerns
The U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada granted summary judgment in part for Nevada-based entertainment attorney John Mason on his claim of breach of legal-services agreements by a film-production company.
Features
'New' Summit Structure Retains Distribution Fees
Summit Entertainment's $1 billion movie financing deal ' which created a new production and distribution studio ' all started with a group of bankers and lawyers sitting around and talking about how to get more money from movie-financing deals. In recent years, investors have invested in films that are distributed by studios, which take a distribution fee of about 10% to 15%. With the Summit deal, the investors for the first time cut the middleman in this process.
Features
The Employee Freedom of Choice Act
After years of lobbying, the Employee Free Choice Act was introduced in 2003, but did not advance. Similar legislation was proposed again in 2005, co-sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA). While it did not pass either the House or Senate, it attracted widespread notice by gaining the support of 44 Senators and 215 Representatives (only three short of the 218 House votes required for passage). Predictably, in early February 2007, with the new Democratic Congress now in power, Rep. Miller, in his role as Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, reintroduced this proposed legislation (H.R. 800) containing all three items on the labor movement's wish list.
Features
Procurement Fraud Enforcement
Each year, the federal government spends several hundred billion dollars to obtain goods and services from corporations and other nongovernmental entities. Under the critical eye of the nation's taxpayers, the federal government has amplified its own scrutiny of the ethics and integrity of its procurement officers and those companies with which it contracts. Via new national legislation and investigative initiatives, the attention of Capitol Hill and federal law enforcement offices across the nation is keenly focused on the prevention, detection and punishment of procurement fraud. It is a brand new day ' and a potentially dark one for the unwary governmental contractor.
Don't Be a Stranger!
We here at Law Journal Newsletters pride ourselves on providing the best-possible, most useful content for our readers. We do this by keeping in constant contact with our Boards of Editors, almost all of whom are attorneys who are experts in their various fields. We talk to readers who call and e-mail. We devour other legal publications (since ALM is our parent company, we have access to the best legal dailies and magazines in the'
Features
Contracts for Future Patent Rights: Israel Bio-Engineering Project v. Amgen
In <i>Israel Bio-Engineering Project v. Amgen, Inc.</i>, 475 F.3d 1256 (Fed. Cir. 2007), the Federal Circuit addressed whether a plaintiff had independent standing to sue on a single patent claim, where the patent-in-suit contained two additional claims directed to subject matter that was discovered in part by a co-inventor who had not assigned his ownership rights in the patent to the plaintiff.
Features
Client Speak: A Matrix of Understanding
By now, 'knowing the client' is a marketing bromide and a fairly tired one at that. To reinvest the mantra with actionable meaning, law firms must understand the in-house dynamic ' they must know how in-house counsel actually think ' in very specific terms.
Features
Note from the Editor
A word from Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth "Betiyan" Tursi.
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