LJN Newsletters

Legislative winds are now stirring to strengthen financial accountability in labor organizations by amending their financial disclosure requirements and by arming the Department of Labor with greater enforcement tools. Labor leaders should learn from the failures of their business counterparts, and not wait for labor scandals to cause a legislative backlash like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

The headlines reporting multi-million dollar corporate guilty pleas often miss a point widely understood among white-collar practitioners: The driving force behind the corporate plea is often not the merits of the government's charge, but the corporation's need to reach a global settlement resolving administrative and criminal sanctions that could put the company out of business.

In order to sue for copyright infringement, it is necessary for the plaintiff to be either the legal or beneficial owner of the copyright in the infringed work. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has found that the creator of a work made for hire cannot be either a legal or beneficial owner of a copyright in such a work.

Highlights of the latest intellectual property news and cases from around the country.

Under U.S. patent law, an inventor is entitled to a patent if the invention is useful, novel, and nonobvious. The "novelty" prong of this tripartite test is controlled by 35 U.S.C. '102, which defines the "prior art" (ie, already existing technology) that can "anticipate," or render non-novel, the invention. In general, an invention sought to be patented is anticipated when it already exists in the prior art, having been placed there either by a third party or through the inventor's own actions. Under '102, prior use of the invention can anticipate a patent in certain circumstances. Specifically, the statute states that: "A person shall be entitled to a patent unless (a) the invention was ... used by others ... before the invention thereof by the applicant ...; or (b) the invention was ... in public use ... more than one year prior to the date of the application.

With the passage of the Domestic Publication of Foreign Filed Patent Applications Act of 1999, the U.S. Congress instituted a pre-grant patent publication system. As a result, the USPTO must now publish domestic utility patent applications filed on or after November 29, 2000 within 18 months of their earliest priority date, unless conditions for preventing publication are met.

Rulings of importance to you and your practice.

In the context of large Chapter 11 cases, the resolution of disputed claims can often be the proverbial albatross around the neck of the debtor, delaying the closing of the debtor's case to the detriment of the debtor's estate.