LJN Newsletters

Franchising is a relatively new but rapidly developing strategy in Vietnam. Although there are currently few business franchise systems based on the traditional Western model currently operating in Vietnam, there is an increasing presence of established international franchise systems currently operating through company-owned and-managed outlets and increasing numbers of local systems, albeit at an early 'product distribution' evolutionary stage. The commercial environment for franchising is increasingly favorable: Vietnam is the fastest-growing Asian economy after China and India, and it is experiencing strong GDP growth and annual retail growth of more than 20%. There is a steady rise in disposable income, an emerging new consumer class, and increasing brand consciousness.

Recent information for you and your practice.

Good business practice in the e-commerce sector, as in the bricks-and-mortar world, requires that companies take steps to ensure that employees comply with company policies, as well as with the laws, rules and regulations that apply to them and their industry. An increasingly important part of that practice involves monitoring and storing electronic documents, including e-mails and their attachments, and managing these documents throughout the information lifecycle. While an electronic document may have a direct business use of only a few minutes ' perhaps to signal agreement to a contract term ' this same document may have an afterlife of many years, during which it must be retained and managed.

The NTP v. RIM case is the latest example of a conundrum facing defendants: how to strategize the confluence of a district court litigation and a Patent Office re-examination proceeding. A district court litigation and a patent office re-examination proceeding both provide methods for challenging the validity of a patent.

Software trainers find the need for computer training never-ending. In many firms, including law firms that advise e-commerce counsel, training programs abound, but users don't seem to be gaining ground fast enough to master the array of desktop applications.

It may not be a match made in heaven, but Internet legal-referral services that promise to match lawyers with potential clients have a powerful new admirer ' the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Do clients actually read the contracts that lawyers write? Even if your carefully drafted documents are read, do you ever feel that they don't make a difference in how decisions are made, or cases get decided? To paraphrase the Miranda warning immortalized by Sgt. Joe Friday and a long line of TV police officers, sometimes the contract you write can and will be used against you in a court of law ' as happened to a company that tried to enforce a boilerplate rule against a former employee that even its own executives didn't follow.

Since 2000, the number of patent applications filed each year in the United States has been in the range of 300,000 ' 375,000, increasing by approximately 10,000 per year. See USPTO U.S. Patent Statistics Calendar Years 1963-2004. At the same time, the number of interference proceedings and infringement suits has also increased. Establishing a priority date for the invention is at the heart of all interference proceedings and is frequently an issue during prosecution and in infringement suits. When sufficient proof is supplied, a priority date based on a date of 'invention' that is earlier than the presumptive priority date, based upon the date of the filing of the application, may be established. Thus corroborative evidence supporting a date of invention, or the lack thereof, is a significant factor in the outcome of many cases and may expedite prosecution for even those patents and applications that steer clear of these disputes.