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Debtors facing mass-tort asbestos liability frequently challenge their insurers' standing to appear in the debtors' bankruptcy cases. They typically argue that their insurers have no standing because the proposed bankruptcy plan is "insurance neutral." Debtors contend alternatively that the insurers' standing is limited to specific issues directly affecting the insurance contract, such as whether the debtor may assign policy proceeds notwithstanding anti-assignment provisions contained in the policy. Despite insurers' strong incentives to participate in mass-tort bankruptcies, bankruptcy courts have frequently been willing to suppress insurer objections that the debtor finds inconvenient.
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One of the major issues for the past quarter century in the litigation of coverage disputes relating to liability for alleged long-term or latent injury or damage (such as those arising from asbestos bodily injury, environmental property damage, or other mass torts) has been "allocation." In particular, insurance companies and policyholders have disputed the scope of coverage provided by an "occurrence"-based general liability policy triggered by injury or damage during its policy period, when the same occurrence also caused harm in other policy periods.
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Software developers invest a great deal of time and effort developing complex code that performs unique functionality for which there is a viable market. These software developers typically offer software licenses that only license object code, <i>ie</i>, the code that can be read by a machine, rather than the source code, <i>ie</i>, code that can be deciphered and read by a person.
In an important decision interpreting the fair use provision of the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §107), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently held that downloading full copies of copyrighted material without compensation to authors cannot be deemed "fair use." In <i>BMG Music v. Gonzalez</i>, 430 F.3d 888 (7th Cir. 2005), Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, rejected the defendant's argument that she was immune from liability because she was merely sampling songs that she had downloaded from the KaZaA file-sharing network on a "try-before-you-buy basis."
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Highlights of the latest intellectual property news from around the country.
According to a recent decision in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the use of an illicitly obtained password and username to enter an otherwise secure Web site does not violate the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). In <i>Egilman v. Keller & Heckman LLP</i>, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28245 (D.D.C. Nov. 10, 2005), the court held that the law firm Keller & Heckman and others working in concert with it who entered Dr. Egilman's Web site through the use of a username and password that they were not authorized to use had not violated the DMCA, regardless of how the username and password were obtained. This surprising decision runs counter to other decisions interpreting the DMCA and would appear to create a significant loophole to the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions.
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To practice successfully, lawyers must rely on others all the time. Whether in litigation or corporate practice, few lawyers today can succeed without trusting associates, paralegals and experts to handle critical tasks quickly and cost-efficiently. It's the way of the modern workaday world. But would you turn your cases over to your firm's head geek?
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What goes up from quarter to quarter and, in a sign of our times, doesn't appear to be headed down any time soon? <br>Take a sip of coffee, scratch your head, chew your pen for a few seconds ... tap your foot (hey ' no looking ahead to the next paragraph).
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When German banking behemoth WestLB needed its people to agree on a strategic plan for developing human resources, it turned to mediator Alex Yaroslavsky and his New York City-based Yaro Group for guidance. Using an innovative system that combines brainstorming software from GroupSystems with traditional arbitration, Yaroslavsky facilitated a collaboration involving about 20 participants. The group, ranging from an analyst to a managing director, achieved in 2 hours what might've taken 2 weeks of discussion and review using only traditional arbitration techniques. <br>Traditional and e-businesses should take note.
Recent cases in e-commerce law and in the e-commerce industry.
