Litigation

A federal judge in Minnesota signed off on a hotly contested $50 million settlement between the National Football League and former players who said the league infringed their publicity rights. The ruling was a blow to a group of plaintiffs' lawyers who lodged objections to the deal, calling it inadequate.

New Patent Litigation Reform Bills Introduced
U.S. Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument on Burden Of Proof for Licensee-DJ Plaintiff
A Split Federal Circuit Denies En Banc Rehearing In Case Involving Finality Of a Judicial Decision
Federal Circuit Explains Exhaustion of Method Patents

Section 504(b) of the Copyright Act allows a copyright owner to obtain both the owner's actual damages as well as an infringer's profits attributable to the infringed work that weren't included in the actual damages award. What are the burdens of proof when a copyright infringement plaintiff seeks this recovery after a pre-trial summary judgment motion has been filed? How does an expert's report work into this?

On Oct. 25, 2013, the Federal Circuit, by a vote of six-to-five, denied rehearing en banc in Commil USA, LLC v. Cisco Sys., Inc., (Commil II). That decision left intact the panel's holding, in a case of first impression, that an alleged indirect infringer's "good-faith belief of invalidity may negate the requisite intent for induced infringement."

After the Beastie Boys sued over the unlicensed use of several of the rap group's tracks in a remix on the soundtrack to a promotional video, defendant energy-drink maker Monster Energy Co. tried to shift the blame onto an unsuspecting disc jockey. That tactic didn't sit well with Southern District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who dismissed the DJ from the litigation.

The Fourth Circuit's ruling in Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Inc. v. American Home Realty Network, Inc. is an important court decision relating to e-commerce and protecting digital database content. The ruling relates to a multiple-listing copyrighted database of real estate listings.

Organizations face serious repercussions in the form of both costly sanctions and adverse inferences for inadequate or failed legal hold procedures. The most basic preservation task however, issuing legal hold notifications, seemingly remains a mystery to a surprising portion of corporate defendants. Too often, organizations, and their counsel, do not view the legal hold notification (LHN) process as a manageable business process.

There is a perception, in large part driven by media bias, that in America today, unlike in times past, "everyone sues." This could not be farther from the truth.