Commercial Law

Features

In the last few years, every college football fan became familiar with "Johnny Football," "The Honey Badger," and "Famous Jameis." These recognizable names are not only associated with Heisman-quality talent, but also with the new world of student athlete trademark registrations.

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Data breaches and cyberattacks aren't new occurrences, but it can sometimes feel like they are. It's only in the last few years that we've seen these attacks make headlines more and more, increasing in both quantity and impact.

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The challenges inherent in managing employee mental illness were vividly illustrated for the world in March of this year with the intentional crash of a Germanwings aircraft by an apparently mentally ill pilot. Although the repercussions of such tragic events can be more significant in safety-sensitive industries like transportation, these kinds of tragic events can happen in any workplace.

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The issue of damages remains a hot topic at the Federal Circuit, with patentees being continuously reminded that damages must be apportioned to account for the value of patented features, as opposed to unpatented features, of an accused product. However, the vast majority of these cases involve apportionment in the context of reasonable royalties. Very little has been said about apportionment in a lost profits analysis.

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Valuation discounts in estate planning has permitted the transfer of assets from one generation to another in an economically efficient manner. Two of the various discount methods claim lack of control (minority interest discount) and lack of marketability. The IRS has traditionally objected to these approaches in intra-family transfers, while Congress has attempted to legislate away these "loopholes" unsuccessfully and the Treasury Department is contemplating new regulations to accomplish this goal.

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Billions of people use the Internet for work-related purposes. According to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, the fastest growing demographic for Internet workers is people aged 45 to 54. This is the same age group that is most likely to engage in workplace injury litigation.

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While some trade on the "black market" or though in-person settings has always existed, the Internet has become the major facilitator of the trade in counterfeit goods. This is because it allows counterfeiters to directly reach consumers instead of having to work through complicit retail middlemen. The counterfeiters often work from countries where brands have limited ability to enforce their trademarks.

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Businesses regularly lose precious data, sometimes even "the crown jewels," through trade secret theft by departing employees, unscrupulous contractors and others. Although trade secret theft is estimated to cause billions of dollars in damage every year, no federal civil claim for trade secret misappropriation currently exists. State laws govern these assets, and they are inconsistently applied. Relief may be in sight.