A spate of recent case law raises the question of which circumstances will enable advice rendered in benefits matters to be protected by the attorney-client privilege and the related work product doctrine.
There are no right or wrong answers as to exactly when an attorney should be in the office, or how many hours are enough (or too much). So what should you do?
If you fail to keep in touch with your prospects on a regular basis, your business development efforts will likely fall short of your hoped-for results.
The intent of this column is to provide a framework for identifying the relative benefits of hosting an event. How can we turn an event into a means for generating revenue?
In <i>CyberSource v. Retail Decisions</i>, a panel of the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court's summary judgment ruling that the asserted patent claims were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101, and held that purely mental processes are unpatentable abstract ideas. The court decided that merely limiting an unpatentable mental process to a computer-readable medium for execution on a processor, in a so-called <i>Beauregard</i> claim, did not satisfy § 101.
The America Invents Act, passed by Congress on Sept. 9, 2011, and signed into law on Sept. 16, 2011, imposes sweeping changes to U.S. patent law. This article focuses on how the new patent laws will require patent practitioners to change the way they practice and advise their clients.
“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.
Insiders (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.
The DOJ's Criminal Division issued three declinations since the issuance of the revised CEP a year ago. Review of these cases gives insight into DOJ's implementation of the new policy in practice.
There is no efficient market for the sale of bankruptcy assets. Inefficient markets yield a transactional drag, potentially dampening the ability of debtors and trustees to maximize value for creditors. This article identifies ways in which investors may more easily discover bankruptcy asset sales.
With 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.
