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'Help, I Need an Attorney'

ALM Staff & Law Journal Newsletters

So much is written in our pages about how to capture the ideal client. About how to market to that client, how to win his or her business and, if that client represents a business in turn, how to win and keep that business too. It's a worthy ideal, especially in today's competitive law environment. All you have to do is pick up any copy of Marketing the Law Firm and our nationally known experts will'

Features

Practice Building Skills: Building the Ideal Business Development Plan Image

Practice Building Skills: Building the Ideal Business Development Plan

Evan Polin & Chuck Polin

Many attorneys ask us, 'What is the ideal prospecting plan for attorneys? Can't my associates and younger partners just follow our top rainmakers for a few days and then just do what they do?' These are two of the initial questions that we hear when we begin working with law firms. Many attorneys assume that there is an easy magic formula for developing new clients, and if they can just get their hands on this secret formula their business development problems will be solved forever. Unfortunately, our experience tells us that a 'one-size-fits-all' magic formula for success does not exist.

Features

Client Speak: Client Co-Marketing Image

Client Speak: Client Co-Marketing

Allan Colman

Client co-marketing builds relationships and sends an unmistakable message.

Features

Best Practices, Productivity Tools Are Key to Higher Patent Returns Image

Best Practices, Productivity Tools Are Key to Higher Patent Returns

Ralph Schroeder

Today's innovation and brand-driven companies are well aware of the importance of intellectual assets ('IAs'). Few CEOs would deny the fact that a significant portion of their company's value is derived from intellectual property, especially patents. However, IAs represent a challenge for many corporate managers seeking to realize value in a world historically tied to 'hard asset' financial measures. Not only do most operating managers lack experience in systematic management of intellectual assets, but also they lack the necessary tools — such as agreed-upon accounting methods and standardized financial reporting for such assets. Not to mention the fact that most companies also lack even the most basic information systems needed to manage how intellectual assets are created, managed, and exploited.

Features

Who Cares About Japan? Image

Who Cares About Japan?

Andrew Carter, Suzue Fujimori & Mark Rollins

Since 2002, when then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stated he intended to transform Japan into a 'nation that is built on the platform of intellectual properties,' the Japanese government has shifted its focus on Intellectual Property ('IP'), bringing about numerous policy changes empowering Japanese firms to actively pursue both defensive and offensive corporate strategies to further discover the inherent value of their intellectual capital. These changes included not only new laws and agencies, but also the establishment of an Intellectual Property High Court ('IPHC') that handles only IP-related cases. For the United States, this signals that Japan is determined to become more competitive in both domestic and international markets using IP.

Features

Cooperatives & Condominiums Image

Cooperatives & Condominiums

ALM Staff & Law Journal Newsletters

A look at recent rulings.

Features

Digging Out from the Information Blizzard Image

Digging Out from the Information Blizzard

H. Lynn Wishart

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.

Features

Family Court Protective Orders Image

Family Court Protective Orders

ALM Staff & Law Journal Newsletters

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.

Features

Protection of Fragrances Image

Protection of Fragrances

Olivier Banchereau

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.

Features

KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et al.: Supreme Court Clarifies Obviousness Image

KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et al.: Supreme Court Clarifies Obviousness

Matthew W. Siegal & Kevin C. Ecker

Before the Supreme Court's April 30, 2007 decision in <i>KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et al.</i>, 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. &sect;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. <i>Id.</i> 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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