Recent news events for your review.

The Seventh Circuit's recent decision in <i>Specialized Seating v. Greenwich Industries, L.P.</i>, highlights several important considerations that are often overlooked by counsel representing clients who claim trade dress rights in product designs. Paramount among those considerations is the effect that claims in a utility patent can have on the availability of trade dress protection.

The increased level of enforcement activity by the FDA has focused the attention of consumers and the plaintiffs' bar on the increased frequency with which physicians prescribe FDA-approved drugs and medical devices for unapproved uses. Plaintiffs' attorneys increasingly choose to name prescribing physicians in their products liability suits as co-defendants, pleading both medical malpractice and other associated tort claims against these physicians, and often premising such claims upon the decision to prescribe for a so-called "off-label" or unapproved use. Thus, the continuing expansion of off-label uses of drugs and devices has led to numerous potential legal minefields for the prescribing physicians.

A high-profile wrongful death case was recently decided for the second time in favor of a Miami couple whose child suffered severe brain damage during his birth at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, FL.

Measuring the extent of medical damages, for a medical malpractice claim as for any other type of negligence claim, is an important part of any case. Normally, when a defendant causes harm that sends a plaintiff to a hospital or doctor, three different measures may be relevant to determining the defendant's liability ' the amount the plaintiff herself has paid for medical care, the amount the plaintiff's health insurance has paid on her behalf, and the amount a health care provider has billed as its "usual and customary" charge.

Features

Perhaps signaling an interest in revisiting the doctrine in its entirety, in April 2010, the Federal Circuit asked for briefing on six questions regarding the defense of inequitable conduct to patent infringement.

The rapid growth in e-book sales and the increasing number of options available to authors for digital distribution of their works are altering the traditional business model of print publishers. The size of the authors' shares and traditional publishers' shares (if any) of e-book sales revenues may depend on where the Digital Distributors obtain their rights to sell e-books: from traditional print publishers, which of necessity are becoming increasingly focused on e-book sales, from new publishers specializing in e-books, or even from the authors themselves.

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e-Commerce spending in the second quarter was up an estimated full $1 billion from the first quarter, or $39.7 billion, the Census Bureau notes in preliminary figures ' a 2.6% rise for April through June, a gain of 1.5% from the first quarter and a healthy increase of 14% from the second quarter of last year.