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Most insurance policies are silent as to which state's substantive law governs their terms. As a result, insurance-coverage lawyers often find ourselves wading deep into the world of choice of law and conflict of laws. Conflicts issues are (largely) untethered from the merits of a case, yet can be outcome determinative; so it is crucial to understand and focus on choice-of-law principles in com-plex insurance disputes, as they can yield the application of different state laws within a single case to issues of contract formation, performance, and bad faith.
Under the terms of a standard Commercial General Liability ('CGL') policy, an insurance company must defend and indemnify its insured for claims of property damage (or bodily injury) resulting from an 'occurrence' subject to certain enumerated policy exclusions. An 'occurrence' is typically defined as 'an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions.' CGL policies do not define the term 'accident' and, consequently, the term has prompted substantial litigation. <i>See State Farm Fire & Cas. Co. v. CTC Dev. Corp.</i>, 720 So. 2d 1072, 1075 (Fla. 1998) (stating that 'few insurance policy terms have provoked more controversy in litigation than the word 'accident''). At the heart of the litigation is the parties' disagreement over what constitutes accidental damage.
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In <i>Agfa Corp. v. Creo Prods. Inc.</i>, 451 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2006), a non-unanimous panel of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ('CAFC') issued an opinion affirming a district court's decision to conduct a bench trial on the defense of inequitable conduct, in spite of the patentee's request for a jury trial, prior to holding a jury trial on patent infringement, patent invalidity, and all other issues in the case. The dissenting member of the panel disagreed with the majority's decision that the patentee in this case did not have a right to a jury trial on the issue of inequitable conduct and suggested that the CAFC majority opinion in <i>Agfa</i> changed precedent established in a prior decision. In deciding <i>Agfa</i>, the majority analyzed the CAFC's decision in <i>Gardco Mfg. v. Herst Lighting Co.</i>, 820 F.2d 1209 (Fed. Cir. 1987) and determined that it applied to the case in <i>Agfa</i>. The majority also distinguished the CAFC decision in <i>In re Lockwood</i>, 50 F.3d 966 (Fed. Cir. 1995), <i>vacated</i>, 515 U.S. 1182 (1995), as inapplicable to the equitable issue in question in <i>Agfa</i>. Conversely, the dissenting panel member argued that the CAFC's decision in <i>Lockwood</i> was indeed applicable to the issues in Agfa. This article reviews the above cases with the goal of determining if the CAFC decision in <i>Agfa</i> is indeed a departure from its previous jurisprudence concerning a patentee's right to a jury trial on the issue of equitable conduct.
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Highlights of the latest franchising cases from around the country.
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Recently filed cases in entertainment law, straight from the steps of the Los Angeles Superior Court.
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The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania decided it has supplemental jurisdiction over a legal malpractice claim included in a suit over renewal rights to the 1970s hit 'Disco Inferno.' <i>Dimensional Music Publishing LLC v. Kersey.</i>
For videogame developers, publishers and investors, the most important asset is the intellectual property rights they own or control in a game. All of the elements of a videogame ' the story, audiovisual elements, underlying computer code and even 'gameplay' elements (ie, that specify the way a user interacts with and experiences a game) ' are subject to one or more forms of intellectual property protection. Traditionally, intellectual property protection for videogames has been based upon either trade secret, copyright or trademark. Patents, however, are quickly becoming an important part of the videogame industry.