Features
<b><i>BREAKING NEWS:</i></b> Jury Awards MGA $88.5 Million in Bratz Doll Retrial
A federal jury has rejected Mattel Inc.'s claims that MGA Entertainment Inc. stole the idea for the wildly profitable Bratz dolls, and instead awarded $88.5 million to MGA for trade secrets theft by Mattel.
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Arbitration Agreements in the Wage-and-Hour Context
For corporate attorneys, questions about how an employer can limit both the costs associated with and exposure to wage-and-hour claims have become ever more difficult. Employer-employee arbitration agreements may be part of the answer.
Features
Litigation
An in-depth review of a recent important case.
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Tumultuous Year Ahead for Same-Sex Marriage
With trepidation from an advocacy community wary of the Supreme Court, the fight over same-sex marriage has now shifted to federal court.
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Raising the Bar for Custody Evaluations
A recent decision provides a guiding beacon for identifying a number of forensic errors that are frequently encountered but often overlooked. It is, therefore, eminently instructive for custody courts, attorneys, and evaluators.
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Grabbing Customers' Copyrights
What's at issue is control, obviously, and the great lengths to which some will go to maintain, it even as they benefit from the wide-open, free-flowing viral information torrent of the Internet. These copyright acquisitions are not primarily motivated by the desire to exploit the works and make money, but rather by the desire to stop the public circulation of texts and images the new owners do not like.
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Ninth Circuit Vacates Injunction In Advertising Keywords Case
Remember U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart's famous line about hardcore pornography? Stewart said it was tough to define, "but I know it when I see it." The quip came to mind after a ruling last month by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a trademark infringement case involving Internet advertising keywords. In essence, the Ninth Circuit concluded that there's no strict standard for determining infringement in the Internet age, so judges have to know it when they see it.
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<b>Decision of Note</b> MI Supreme Court Dismisses Claim over Backstage Taping
The Supreme Court of Michigan dismissed an eavesdropping claim by city officials who were taped backstage while demanding that a video they considered improper for young audience members not be played during a Detroit concert that featured rappers Dr. Dre, Eminem and Snoop Dogg.
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Parameters of the Witness No Contact Rule
This article articulates some of the common issues that a lawyer should consider under Model Rule 4.2, but the manner in which Model Rule 4.2 is applied across different jurisdictions may vary.
Features
Quarterly State Compliance Review
This edition of the Quarterly State Compliance Review looks at some enacted and pending legislation of interest to corporate lawyers. It also discusses some recent cases of interest, including decisions from Delaware and New York concerning the awarding of attorneys' fees.
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MOST POPULAR STORIES
- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.Read More ›
- Risks of “Baseball Arbitration” in Resolving Real Estate Disputes“Baseball arbitration” refers to the process used in Major League Baseball in which if an eligible player's representative and the club ownership cannot reach a compensation agreement through negotiation, each party enters a final submission and during a formal hearing each side — player and management — presents its case and then the designated panel of arbitrators chooses one of the salary bids with no other result being allowed. This method has become increasingly popular even beyond the sport of baseball.Read More ›
- Private Equity Valuation: A Significant DecisionInsiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.Read More ›
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- The DOJ Goes Phishing: The Rise of False Claims Act Cybersecurity LitigationWhile the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.Read More ›