Developing a Partner Scorecard That Is Meaningful To Your Firm
This article is the first in a series about developing a customized scorecard for your firm's partners, specific information to include in the scorecard, tailoring it to your firm's goals, and getting partners to understand the scorecard and achieve greater success.
Implementing an Alternative Billing Program
Corporate counsel are exercising increased bargaining power about fees and terms of employment of outside law firms. Law firms can no longer ignore the competition of the marketplace when establishing billing rates and fees. Several variations and combinations of three basic billing systems, hourly billing, fixed fee billing and contingent fee billing, follow.
Employers' Right to Limit Employees' E-Mail Upheld
In a recent decision, the NLRB, in a 3-2 decision split along Republican/Democrat lines, held that one company's Communications Systems Policy was lawful on its face, and that the employer's discipline based on the two e-mails soliciting support for union positions was lawful, but that the disciplinary action based on the purely informative e-mail was unlawful. What does this portend?
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There Ain't No Such Thing As a Free Prospectus
The SEC's Securities Offering Reform dramatically changed the landscape of registered public offerings. Issuers and underwriters would do well to take advantage of these changes while staying aware of potential fraud liability. Here's an explanation.
Features
<b>Net News</b> Ninth Circuit Text-message Ruling Could Impact Corporate Policies
Most employees know that their bosses are usually within their rights snooping on workers' e-mail, but text messaging has been in murkier territory. A federal appeals court sought to clarify matters in a ruling last month by distinguishing between electronic communication that employers store on their servers, or pay someone to store, and communication that is contracted out to third parties.
<b>BREAKING NEWS:</b> Supreme Court Limits Companies' Ability to Collect Multiple Royalties on Their Patents
The Supreme Court on June 9 breathed new life into the doctrine of patent exhaustion -- thereby limiting the power of patent-holders over "downstream" transactions. In a unanimous ruling authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court stood firm behind the 150-year-old doctrine under which "the sale of a patented item terminates all patent rights to that item."
Plenty of Reasons Why You Should Bother Getting U.S. Patents
Part One of this article identified two reasons why it is worthwhile to obtain U.S. patents. This second installment continues the discussion with five additional reasons.
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ANDA Litigation Discovery
Patent infringement litigation based on an Abbreviated New Drug Application ('ANDA') presents certain unique challenges to the discovery process. Unlike ordinary patent litigation, little if any information helpful to the patent owner is publicly available. Instead, the patent owner must rely on a well thought out discovery plan to obtain certain information from the ANDA applicant. Suggestions for designing such a plan are presented below.
The Best April Fools' Day Non-Prank
On April 1, 2008, Judge James C. Cacheris of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia permanently enjoined rules promulgated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ('USPTO'). News of the federal ruling spread like wildfire among the patent community, quickly leading to e-mails wondering whether the ruling was an elaborate April Fools' Day joke. It was not. Now there are concerns (or hopes) about the implications of the ruling on other USPTO proposed rules as well as the impact Patent Law Reform in Congress could have on the ruling.
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