LJN Newsletters

An associate recruitment and retention crisis is looming for which there are no easy solutions. Law schools continue to graduate roughly 40,000 students a year, as they have over the last 20 years. The AmLaw 200 law firms have been steadily hiring an average of 4%+ more associates each year, resulting last year in a typical incoming associate class of 50. That means that AmLaw 200 firms now hire about 10,000 new associates a year, or about 50% of the graduates from the top 100 (hardly the Ivy League elite) of the nation's 200 law schools.

When a client wants to modify a child support or maintenance order, the matrimonial law practitioner must generally start by reviewing the standard applicable to the type of modification involved in the case. An occasional review of these standards can be helpful in keeping the practitioner focused. In addition, a concise discourse on these principles can be an invaluable tool for educating the newer attorney to the field.

Under New York's Family Court Act of 1994, parties may obtain protective orders through Family Court and Integrated Domestic Violence Court only if they are married to or divorced from their alleged abuser, they are blood relatives of their abuser, or are single adults with children in common with their abuser. This means that a lot of people who want to get orders of protection must go to the criminal courts. That might seem fine, except for the fact that the standard of proof for permanent protective orders thus becomes 'beyond a reasonable doubt' rather than 'by a preponderance of the evidence.' In addition, the individual victim loses control of the process by having to involve the police and rely on overworked prosecutors to vigorously pursue the abuser.

Does your divorcing client's Statement of Net Worth reflect the fair market value of the life insurance policies he or she owns? This seems like a simple question, but in certain circumstances it may actually be quite complex.

Highlights of the latest intellectual property news from around the country.

The perfume industry is a wealthy and profitable one, generating an ever-increasing turnover worldwide. However, as do all successful industries, it attracts numerous counterfeiters and tempts indelicate competitors to copy successful perfumes. Although perfumes are expensive and sensitive products whose development requires time and sizeable investment, they are, unfortunately, hard to protect against unauthorized copies.

Before the Supreme Court's April 30, 2007 decision in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et al., 127 S.Ct. 1727 (2007) virtually all patent attorneys were on the edge of their seats. The decision was a clear indication that the Supreme Court disfavored the current state of the law that had been developed by the Federal Circuit for determining whether a patent is invalid for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. §103. The Supreme Court pointed to numerous errors in the Federal Circuit decision and characterized as 'rigid,' 'formalistic,' 'narrow,' 'constricted,' and 'flaw[ed]' the Federal Circuit's requirement that there be proof the claimed combination of elements was arrived at due to a teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine features from prior art references. Id. at 1739, 1741-42. Instead, the Supreme Court imposed a more flexible approach that sought to emphasize its earlier decisions on obviousness over tests the Federal Circuit had developed to apply the law set forth in those decisions.

On April 30, 2007, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., No. 05-1056, 127 S. Ct. 1746 (2007). The Microsoft decision addressed the scope of §271(f) of the Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. §271(f), which provides that it is an act of infringement to 'supply' the 'components' of a patented invention from the United States for combination outside the United States.