A new, more proactive ' if tedious ' hiring strategy has emerged that mid-market firms are adopting. Rather than target highly sought-after rainmakers or hope for a ready-made practice group to shake loose from a large firm, these practices are building their offices piecemeal by cherry-picking young guns from the biggest and best firms, enticing them with flexible billing rates, shorter partnership tracks, oodles of support and a free rein.
Why is private equity funding the hottest thing in franchising today? In the past 12 months, private equity buyouts have included well-known brands such as Cinnabon, Church's Chicken, Taco Bueno (a regional taco maker), and regional frozen dessert operator Rita's Italian Ice.
Highlights of the latest franchising cases from around the country.
Highlights of the latest franchising news from around the country.
On Jan. 26, 2006, an amendment to the Mexican Industrial Property Law (Ley de la Propiedad Industrial) ("IPL") became effective. The new amendment mandates new requirements for presale franchise disclosure and for franchise agreements. To comply with the law, most franchisors will need to change their existing forms of franchise agreements used in Mexico.
Franchisors face major challenges in finding the right sales personnel and being able to afford them, and in developing and funding the right marketing strategy. One tempting way to handle these challenges is to hire a sales broker to do it all.
Does anyone remember this scene? "Call on 2 for Joe Jones!!" "Hold 2!!" Before cell phones, that was how you reached someone in the USPTO Public Search Room in Crystal Plaza 3 of Crystal City. Joe disappeared into a phone booth to conduct his business.
The Supreme Court has recently taken an increased interest in patent cases. In recent months the Supreme Court has granted certiorari on a trilogy of patent cases: Medimmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., case number 05-608, on Feb. 21, 2006 (www.supreme courtus.gov/docket/05-608.htm); Ebay, Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., case number 05-130, on Nov. 28, 2005 (www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/05-130.htm) and Lab Corp. of Am. Holdings v. Metabolite Labs, Inc., case number 04-607, on Oct. 31, 2005 (www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/04-607.htm). Collectively, the decisions in these cases could reshape the patent landscape: addressing the right of licensees to challenge patents, the ability of patent holders to secure injunctions and the breadth of business method patents. More specifically, the questions before the Court in the three cases are set forth below.
Correcting an inefficient paradigm can sometimes result in significant innovation. There is an opportunity to create such innovation within the world of Intellectual Property ("IP") by changing the method by which patented products are "marked." Traditionally considered to be an issue associated primarily with the quantification of damages in patent enforcement litigations, modifying the patent statute to allow for patent marking via the Web could potentially result in a significant, long-lasting, positive change within the world of IP that extends far beyond the quantification of patent damages.
Open source software is distributed under more than 60 recognized licenses (see www.opensource.org). One of the most popular open source licenses, which is used to distribute open source programs such as Linux, MySQL and Samba, is the GNU General Public License, generally considered to be the most restrictive of all open source licenses. The GPL, as it is commonly known, requires that an open source program distributed under the license be redistributed together with all modifications free of charge and with the accompanying source code. That restriction ensures that the public will be able to benefit from subsequent improvements to open source programs and prevents the development of improved "proprietary" closed source versions of programs licensed under the GPL.
