Features
Bidders Beware
The aggregate value of private equity acquisitions worldwide in 2006 exceeded $660 billion. If this number seems mind-boggling, consider that this record-breaking volume of transactions appears well on the way to being eclipsed in 2007. Even with corporate financing for leveraged buyouts harder to come by as a consequence of the sub-prime mortgage fallout, there is, by some estimates, $300 billion sitting globally in private-equity funds.
Cases of Note
Ninth Circuit Vitiates Online Contract Arbitration Clause
Features
Californian Can Be Sued in NJ for Alleged Libel on Internet
New Jersey's long-arm jurisdiction over Internet disputes just got a little longer. A New Jersey state appeals court ruled in July that a California resident accused of making libelous statements in a Web-based forum can be sued in New Jersey because the material was 'targeted' toward a New Jersey audience.
Taxes and the Internet
Taxes and the Internet have generated a continuous stream of discussion ' but not much more. For all that has been written over the years, remarkably little has happened, other than the passage (and periodic temporary renewals) of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, and pressure on national firms' online operations to collect tax (as described below). The 'problems' ' untaxed economic activity ' that have created so much uncertainty for e-commerce firms and their customers alike remain just as much of an unknown risk, without a solution in sight. Perhaps the continued growth of e-commerce will simply be the unintended result of this inaction, the tax accountant's equivalent of the physician's motto, 'do no harm' ' that is: our tax system has done nothing to get in the way of e-commerce.
<b><i>Commentary: </b></i>Keep the Core Neutral: ICANN Policy Proposes to Restrict New Domain Names
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ('ICANN'), the private California corporation set up by the United States Commerce Department in 1998 to manage and control the Internet's root server, is developing a policy to introduce new generic Top-Level Domains. Unfortunately, the draft policy ignores freedom of expression guarantees, expands the rights of trademark owners on the Internet and sets up an arbitrary and subjective process in which ICANN will decide what ideas may be expressed in Internet domain names ' and by whom.
Bit Parts
Book Publishing/Personal Jurisdiction; Copyright Infringement/Preliminary Injuctions; Right-of-Publicity Claims/Insurance; Theatrical Productions/Personal Jurisdiction; Video-Game Statutes/Constitutionality.
Features
Clause & Effect
Recording Agreements/Forum-Selection Clause; Royalty Claims/Letter of Inducement; TV Music Scores/Synchhornization Royalties.
Keeping Track of Celebrity Image Use
For celebrities, image is everything. For the entertainment lawyers who represent their interests, that means confronting ever more complex efforts to profit from (or poison) a client's fame. Among the talent-side lawyers, there's a small club of firms doing the lion's share of the image work for the big stars.
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