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Features
In August 2006 the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit rendered a decision in a case titled <i>In Re: Commercial Money Center, Inc.</i> (<i>Netbank, FSB v. Kipperman</i>), U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit, BAP No. SC-05-1238-MoTB; Bk.No. 02-09721-H7; Adv. No. 03-90331-H7, holding that payment streams stripped from equipment leases are payment intangibles, not chattel paper, and thereby overturning the bankruptcy court decision. Accordingly, the assignment of the payment streams could be automatically perfected under '9-309(3) of Revised Article 9. Additionally, the court agreed with the bankruptcy court and held that the transactions in this case were loans, not sales, so there was no automatic perfection. Finally, the court held that there were unresolved factual and legal issues as to whether the lender had perfected its security interest in the leases by taking possession through a third-party agent, and therefore remanded the case for further proceedings.
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Improving client service is especially important, as general counsels of large companies have revealed to BTI Consulting that more than two-thirds would not recommend their primary law firm, 50% plan to try a new law firm for a substantive matter this year and they plan to cut nearly 40% of their outside firms by 2008. With decreasing client loyalty, firms need to spend more time improving client service as well as building barriers to entries to other outside law firms.
Meet John Buchanan, Director of Global Communications at O'Melveny & Myers LLP
Features
Two firms from the MLF 50 are standouts in the area of client-centric marketing activities and for different reasons. <br>The first, Winston & Strawn, led by Director of Business Development and Marketing Partner Barbara C. Sessions, embarked on an overall visibility campaign with an overarching theme on client-focused service and they did this via their Web site.<br>No less outstanding in harnessing client-centric based marketing is the firm of Holland & Hart. In 2006, the marketing department, led by Director of Marketing Mark Beese (or as he refers to himself the 'Marketing Guy') engaged in several new initiatives; each of them intimately involving the firm's clients, with the goal of deepening Holland & Hart's relationship with current clients and attracting new ones. The firm's advertising campaign has evolved to highlight innovative and successful clients as part of the Holland & Hart trademark western wilderness.
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The difference between winning and losing a billion dollars in a patent case can be as seemingly insignificant as a date. But when that date is a disputed priority date for the asserted patent, it is not only potentially outcome-determinative, but also quite difficult to establish. A priority dispute often arises in patent litigation when the accused infringer asserts a prior art reference that predates the filing of the application for the patent-in-suit, but postdates the time at which work on the patented invention began. Faced with this art, the patentee has two options: fight the prior art on the patent's merits, potentially limiting the scope of the claims and impairing its infringement arguments, or 'swear behind' the reference by establishing a pre-filing priority date before the asserted reference, and thus eliminate the reference as prior art. In most cases, swearing behind the reference is the better option because it does not typically affect the substance of the claims. By swearing behind the reference, the patentee does not have to draw distinctions between the reference and the claims that can be used against it later in claim construction or in the context of a noninfringement argument. But establishing an earlier priority date can be tricky because it generally requires evidence, including corroborating documents, showing that the invention was reduced to practice before the inventor filed the patent application.
As 2006 comes to a close ' and in keeping with tradition ' we will take a look back at the topics that defined this past year in the areas of marketing, business development, media and, most recently, management issues.
The value to U.S. practitioners of provisional patent applications is still being uncovered, even though they arrived more than 10 years ago and were substantially improved more than 7 years ago by allowing convertibility to non-provisional patent applications.
All across America, citizens were recently asked to choose between two popular candidates. Not Democrat versus Republican, but Firefox 2.0 versus Internet Explorer 7. With major upgrades released for each of these popular Web browsers, the question for netizens is: 'Which should get my vote?'
The value of a good lawyer is not proven in redrafting maps of familiar ports, but rather it is secured by successfully navigating uncharted waters. Sophisticated purchasers of legal services understand this, and they expect today's lawyers to quickly locate, validate, update and utilize past work product where it is prudent to do so. Forward thinking firms now utilize tools to effectively mine their own documents, but I was recently introduced to an amazing concept: Why stop looking for precedent documents at your firewall, if you can just as easily access documents filed by your competitor? The ramifications of this new concept are astounding.
Electronic discovery software is on the move. Programs are improving, new players have been entering the market and consolidation is rampant.