LJN Newsletters

Highlights of the latest franchising cases from around the country.

Although passage of the federal Employee Free Choice Act ("EFCA") has taken a distant back seat to health care reform, the proposed changes to workplace unionization and collective bargaining rules have significant potential impacts for business owners.

Who's doing what; who's going where.

In the filing of a patent application, the patent agent or attorney is like the commanding officer conducting the battle. This "General" has specialized techniques for drafting and prosecuting patent applications and attempts to get the best patents issued for the client.

Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in a long-running patent misuse litigation of potential significance for any patent owner participating in a patent pool or considering participation in a patent pool.

The USPTO established the Peer Review Pilot Program (the "Pilot") to test whether "the organized collection and submission of documents together with comments by the public will produce better examination results by presenting prior art known by the public to the Examiner early in the prosecution." The USPTO is expected to publish a comprehensive report outlining the results and next steps.

New comprehensive and self-executing rules in New Jersey have encouraged thought that litigants keep an eye on the state to see whether these procedures shorten the delays associated with litigation of patent cases, thereby making New Jersey the next favored jurisdiction or IP "rocket docket."

At the same time steps are being instituted to curtail COLI, there is an ever-increasing need to fund for employee medical care and post-retirement medical expenses. The use of COLI and the new Health Savings Accounts ("HSA") can provide a robust funding vehicle.