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.
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.
The recent announcement that social-networking phenomenon Twitter has agreed to settle FTC charges that Twitter engaged in inadequate privacy and information-security practices illustrates some simple mistakes social media and other online companies can make.
One of the virtues of e-commerce has always been its low barrier to entry. For little investment of time or money, anyone can set up shop online, whether selling advice or widgets. But can something so easily accomplished really be a business? Will an entrepreneur run something out of her spare bedroom the same way as if she had venture capitalists peering over her shoulders, demanding a business plan, financial statements, budgets, marketing plans and everything that a bricks-and-mortar retailer has (except the expense of leasing space)? If not, she may treat it as just another hobby, something to handle in her free time.
President Obama signed into law the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act (SBJC) of 2010 on Sept. 27. More than $12 billion in tax incentives and relief provisions that are contained in the Act will directly or indirectly affect law firms, partners, their staffs and their clients.
When it comes to getting paid for legal services, attorneys typically focus far more on getting paid than on who is making the payment. But they need to be concerned about the signature on the check.
There are good reasons to believe that social media represents the next frontier in effective legal marketing, and many competitors have already hit the ground running. What do you need to know?
At the office, in the car or anywhere else, we share every detail of our daily existence in real time on Facebook. Most of the time, this is acceptable and constitutionally protected behavior. But what happens in the courtroom when jurors post their opinions about a case online during trial?
Federal statutes protecting whistleblowers are on the rise. Most recently, the Dodd-Frank Act, meant to overhaul and strengthen federal oversight of the financial system, included workplace protections for whistleblowers in the financial services industry. But that is not the only new law to include whistleblower protections.
