Commercial Law

Expert analysis of the latest cases.

Recent rulings of importance to you and your practice.

Can a Notice of Opposition in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Trial and Appeal Board give rise to an actual controversy under the Declaratory Judgment Act to support a trademark Applicant's federal declaratory judgment action against the Opposer? Generally, it can't ' or more accurately, it doesn't. But in Neilmed Products, Inc. v. Med-Systems, Inc., the Northern District of California found that the Notice of Opposition pleaded detailed factors relevant to liability for trademark infringement and dilution.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently issued one of the first decisions in the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to interpret '503(b)(9), an important new Bankruptcy Code provision passed under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act: In re Bookbinders' Restaurant Inc. '503(b)(9) is certain to impact the relationship between a debtor seeking to reorganize and the trade vendors that deal with it.

This article outlines the requirements for providing notification of a security breach under state security breach notification laws by any company and the factors that a public company needs to take into account regarding whether to disclose a security breach under federal securities law.

In 2005, the Superior Court of Rhode Island held that '44112 of Title 49 of the U.S. Code did not protect the owner and lessor of an aircraft from vicarious liability for negligence of a lessee of the aircraft. Coleman v. Windham Aviation Inc. In light of the decision in Windham (and others discussed below), owners, lessors, of aircraft must be aware of the possibility that a state court may very well impose vicarious liability.

Highlights of the latest commercial leasing cases from around the country.

The broker provision of a lease should acknowledge the broker or brokers entitled to compensation and provide representations that the parties have not worked with any other broker in connection with the lease. Typically, the parties also agree to indemnify each other for violating these representations.