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In <i>MedImmune v. Genentech</i>, decided Jan. 9, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court swept away over a decade of Federal Circuit precedent to find that a licensee need not breach a patent license in order to file a declaratory judgment action for patent invalidity or unenforceability. The decision shifted substantial power from licensors to licensees: previously, a licensee had to choose the lesser of two evils. On one hand, the licensee could comply with the terms of a license agreement and forego any challenge to a patent, even if it felt the patent was not infringed, invalid, or unenforceable. On the other hand, the licensee could breach the license and challenge infringement, validity, and enforceability; in doing so, however, it exposed itself to potentially trebled damages and attorney's fees under 35 U.S.C. '' 284 &amp; 285 and an injunction against future sales under 35 U.S.C. ' 283 if its challenge failed.

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The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse estimates that over 100 million records containing sensitive personal information have been involved in security breaches. This non-profit consumer organization has tracked these breaches on its website (www.privacyrights.org) beginning with the significant and well-publicized ChoicePoint breach in February 2005. As a result, over two-thirds of states enacted security breach notification laws governing the notification that a company must make in the event of a security breach. This article outlines the requirements for providing notification of a security breach under state security breach notification law by any company and the factors that a public company needs to take into account regarding whether to disclose a security breach under federal securities law.

One of the principal problems in our civil justice system is holding a defendant responsible for some very bad harm that it did not cause. Acting as 'gatekeepers,' judges are the key persons who can prevent this injustice, and many keep out both so-called 'junk science' and preserve the integrity of our legal system. Some very well meaning judges, however, do not do so. Sometimes, they can be persuaded to allow a jury to have a look at a case that should have been dismissed.

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When the dust settles from the current round of discussions on increasing the federal minimum wage, the lowest paid of the country's non-exempt employees may or may not be earning an additional dollar or two per hour. Either way, the debate will have drawn the country's ' and the plaintiffs' bars' ' attention toward the lowest paid of our country's workers, and the climate will be right for those attorneys to begin focusing not only on how much non-exempt employees are being paid per hour, but also on whether these workers are being paid in a manner that is consistent with every intricate (and often contrary-to-common-sense) twist and turn of federal and state law.

Corporations, LLCs, and other statutory business entities must comply with the provisions of their home states' business entity laws. These laws are constantly being amended by the state legislatures and interpreted by the courts. This edition of our new regular series, Quarterly State Compliance Review, looks at some amendments to these laws that went into effect during the last three months, and reviews some court cases of interest decided during that period.

In 15 years of advising corporate and government litigators on the best processes and technology to deliver discovery management solutions, our company, IE Discovery, consistently encounters a common challenge in almost every organization: The legal and information technology departments simply do not communicate well. This can have major ramifications in producing information in response to requests from investigators, regulators, or litigation opponents. In the following dialogue, IE Discovery's corporate counsel, Stacy O'Neil Jackson, and its technology services and support manager, Keith Moore [the authors], discuss some of the reasons for this breakdown and provide some practical tips for improving the communication between IT and Legal.

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National news items you need to know.

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Recent rulings of importance to you and your practice.