Features
Reconsidering the Special Facts Exception
Special facts is a court-created equitable doctrine that allows a land use applicant to avoid the impact of a change of zone enacted while the application is pending, by showing significant governmental delay of the application together with proof that but for the delay, the landowner would have been able to vest in its use before the zoning was changed. In November 2013, the Court of Appeals decided <i>Rocky Point</i>, a case that the plaintiff (represented by the author) hoped would not only allow it to prevail, but would also clarify the special facts doctrine.
Legal Spending Trends
Recently, the LexisNexis CounselLink division published a study of the spending patterns of corporate legal departments. The study unveiled macro-economic trends about the shifting spending habits from the largest category of law firms to those that are "Large Enough." The basis of the analysis was two million invoices, covering 300,000 matters, which were valued at more than $10 billion in legal fees.
Features
Are You Blawging, Or Flawging?
Lots of attorneys are being told that they need to start blogging (or "blawging", as many attorneys refer to it). From a marketing perspective, this advice makes a lot of sense. There's an old advertising adage, credited to David Ogilvy from the pre-"Mad Man" days of advertising, that when it comes to big-ticket purchases, "long copy sells."
Features
Another Look at Rule 10b5-1 Trading Plans
By establishing a prearranged plan to trade their companies' stock in compliance with SEC Rule 10b5-1, corporate executives avail themselves of the only formally codified affirmative defense against a charge of insider trading. However, statistical evidence demonstrating that executives in trading plans outperform their peers by 6% to 10% have twice brought trading plans under academic and journalistic scrutiny.
Columns & Departments
Drug & Device News
New Plan in Mesh Litigation <br>Change Would Let Generic Drug Companies Make Not-Yet Approved Label Changes<br>Trial over Billion-Dollar Molecules Yields $400,000 Verdict
Features
Business of Branding: Avoiding Bad Investments in Your Marketing
Like your finances, your firm's marketing efforts should be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that your short- and long-term plans are in order.
Features
With Virtual Currency, Does Virtually Anything Go?
In late 2013, a Subway sandwich franchise in Pennsylvania was making the news for being one of the first small American businesses to accept bitcoin as payment for purchases. According to press reports, that franchise generated a lot of interest among hungry bitcoin enthusiasts, who went out of their way to visit the store. Should this be dismissed as a mere publicity stunt, or is the use of bitcoin something that deserves some thought?
Columns & Departments
Bit Parts
Nashville Federal Court Finds Plausible Copyright Infringement Claim over "Remind Me" Phrase<br>Puerto Rico District Court Rules There Were Implied Licenses for Music Festival Artworks, But Were the Licenses Irrevocable?<br>Songwriting Income and Record Production Activity Don't Support Long-Arm Jurisdiction
Accounting for Obamacare
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, created the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), a part of each state's Health Insurance Marketplace, where small businesses with under 50 full-time equivalent employees can purchase group health plans. The small business owner is continually being placed in an untenable position without the ability to do any planning.
Features
A Dangerous Undertaking
Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote that "it would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations." If Holmes didn't think he could do it, which of us thinks we're up to the task? Nonetheless, this was just the challenge taken up by Judge Block of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in <i>Cohen v. G&M Realty L.P.</i>
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MOST POPULAR STORIES
- 'Customary Operations' or A Vacant Building?Many times, courts are faced with the question of whether a loss location is 'vacant' under a commercial property policy when trying to determine if the building owner or lessee is conducting customary operations. This article explores various decisions across the United States as to what is considered 'customary operations,' thereby rendering the property 'vacant.'Read More ›
- Reining in the Inequitable Conduct DefenseResponding to views from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and elsewhere about the unintended consequences of the current inequitable conduct doctrine, a divided <i>en banc</i> Federal Circuit decision issued on May 25, 2011 adjusted the standard of the materiality element to make this defense harder to establish.Read More ›
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- Authorship and Copyright In Hybrid AI-Human Collaborative WorksThe United States Copyright Office recently issued a letter ruling on the copyrightability of Kristina Kashtanova's comic book-like work, Zarya of the Dawn. The Kashtanova ruling indicates that the Copyright Office's determination of copyrightability of works involving use of AI will rely on whether the author is able to control and foresee with some measure of predictability the output of the authorial processRead More ›
- Judge Rules Shaquille O'Neal Will Face Securities Lawsuit for Promotion, Sale of NFTsA federal district court in Miami, FL, has ruled that former National Basketball Association star Shaquille O'Neal will have to face a lawsuit over his promotion of unregistered securities in the form of cryptocurrency tokens and that he was a "seller" of these unregistered securities.Read More ›