Commercial Law

Are the imperatives of innovation and compliance always mutually exclusive? This article explores these very different but perhaps not always incompatible concerns.

As many practitioners have found, taking a client's standard-form equipment lease and creating an equipment finance agreement is more complicated than it appears.

Companies should carefully examine their insurance programs, evaluate what coverage already may be available, and see what may be done to enhance the available coverage. To the extent that there may be gaps in available coverage, companies should consider how those gaps can be filled, including through specialty "cyber" risk policies.

Few courts have considered the issue of whether post-repair diminution in value damages are recoverable under a commercial property policy.

In Nov. 2012, Seattle U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik had ruled that 'Godfather of Funk' George Clinton must cede the copyrights to the master recordings of four Fundadelic albums released by Warner Bros. between 1976 and 1981 to Seattle-based Hendricks & Lewis to make good on more than $1.5 million in unpaid legal fees.

Amendments to the Ohio Business Opportunity Law went into effect a few months ago, offering what franchise attorneys are calling a balanced approach that improves pre-sale disclosures to protect franchisees but also gives franchisors greater protection from lawsuits that cite minor, technical violations of the state's rules.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, although 'deeply troubled' by his behavior, refused to sanction prominent entertainment attorney Marc Toberoff for alleged discovery violations during his lengthy court battle over the rights to Superman.

The 2010 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that artists can be entitled, under their pre-existing recording agreements, to half of record-label income from digital sales has triggered claims involving thousands of artists.Following are three recent developments in this litigation area.