LJN Newsletters

In a release this summer, the FTC announced it had brought and settled its first case involving crowd-funding. The defendant raised more than $122,000 through Kickstarter to produce a Monopoly-like board game geared toward H.P. Lovecraft fans. According to the FTC's complaint, defendant used the Kickstarter proceeds to pay for personal expenses, including his move to Oregon. The settlement order should serve as a reminder that strong legal remedies at both the state and federal level are available to defrauded contributors.

A variety of potential liability theories ' such as professional malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty claims ' may be pursued against in-house counsel by the corporation, its shareholders, and members of the public, as well as by governmental authorities. Here's what you need to know.

For a generation, courts have confronted difficult issues involving insurance coverage for asbestos, environmental, and other long-tail claims. A threshold problem concerns which policies are "triggered" for coverage purposes where exposure may precede manifestation of injury or other damage by many years or even decades.

Versata Development Group v. SAP America was a closely watched case since it was the first appeal to the Federal Circuit of a Covered Business Methods review by the PTAB under Section 18 of the America Invents Act. This article addresses the court's reasoning regarding the definitions of a covered business method patent, and how that reasoning is at odds with norms of statutory construction, technological innovation, and claim drafting.

A cooperating witness in the Dewey & LeBoeuf criminal trial, Dianne Cascino, testified last month that she didn't believe she was breaking the law when she made accounting adjustments as the firm's director of revenue support.

Attorneys rarely think about billings and collections in the summer or early fall. Instead, those are topics often left to the year-end collections push. By waiting, however, attorneys lose money, assume risks and otherwise miss important red flags for potential problems that can be avoided or resolved.

Professional service organizations traditionally have elected a pass thru entity status (S Corp., LLC, LLP, partnership) in order to reduce double taxation at the principal's level. Similar additional taxation may occur with C Corps. and accumulated earnings tax as well as other confiscatory grabs. These issues create an impediment for the current accumulation of funds to satisfy a principal's buyout in future years.

Recently, Third Circuit Judge Cheryl Ann Krause urged the court to "consider eliminating, or at the very least reforming equitable mootness." Two recent decisions from the Third and Ninth Circuits confirm why Judge Krause is right.