As the Boy Scouts say: "Be Prepared." And in today's economic climate, that means prepare in advance ' when a contract is entered into ' to protect yourself in case the other entertainment-industry party declares bankruptcy. This requires a basic understanding of the extraordinary protections and rights that are afforded to debtors in a bankruptcy, particularly the right to void unperfected security interests and to terminate executory contracts. So forewarned is forearmed.

A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has severely curtailed the power of the U.S. International Trade Commission to exclude from importation into the United States products made by companies that were not a party to the proceedings.

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In December, U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson of the Central District of California granted Mattel a sweeping injunction that essentially shuts down MGA's Bratz operation. Larson ordered MGA to cease manufacturing, marketing and selling almost every doll in the Bratz line, as well as any ancillary product that makes use of images of those dolls. He also ordered MGA, at its own expense, to deliver all infringing dolls and products to Mattel for impoundment.

The fate of 74 lawyers in Los Angeles was unclear after New York lawyer Marc Dreier was charged in December with $100 million in securities fraud. Dreier, the founder and managing partner of New York firm Dreier LLP, was charged with one count of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud, both of which involve a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Part One of this article addressed judicial and other mechanisms in the United States and China that a patentee can utilize to safeguard evidence under an alleged infringer's control. This second installment continues the discussion of safeguarding evidence in China.

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In January 2003, Duane Morris recognized a need to provide a better IP docketing system. The new docketing system needed to be user-friendly and give users the ability to create reports quickly and efficiently. It also needed to provide a flexible solution for incorporating the dockets of lateral hires during the firm's growth cycle and to integrate the firm's nine separate IP docketing databases into a master database. Finally, it was vital that it work well within the firm's existing infrastructure.

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For the past 15 years, the PTO has been issuing patents based on its interpretation of Federal Circuit precedent that a previously unknown DNA sequence that encodes a known polypeptide is non-obvious. This precedent, established by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in <i>In re Bell</i>, and later reaffirmed in <i>In re Deuel</i>, is now being challenged by the Patent Office Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences.

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As part of my role as Firm Administrator, productivity lags, as well as bottlenecks and workflow issues concerning flow of information and documents, are all brought to my attention ' sooner or later ' and obviously require swift action. We were faced with a big challenge when we began to rate the efficacy of our existing dictation technology and best practices of delivering dictations.