In 2010, Congress enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in order to target U.S. taxpayers using offshore accounts to hide monies overseas. Although Congress' purpose and intent in passing FATCA was met, it has been achieved at a cost of imposing heavy burdens on those already compliant.
Having been urged to do so by the Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit recently expanded liability under 35 U.S.C. '271(a) for direct infringement of a method patent involving more than one actor (divided infringement).
When organizations discuss ESI, it almost always revolves around three core groups: legal and/or compliance; records management; and, of course, IT. Despite the fact that they all are responsible for important business functions associated with this data, they are seldom on the same page.
When responding to e-discovery events such as audits or potential litigation, the cost of persisting with older, traditional methods for key parts of the process can nearly bankrupt a company. Modern archiving technologies that consolidate and proactively store content in a single "search-ready" repository are now playing a crucial role within next generation 2.0 e-discovery processes.
A California Court of Appeal recently affirmed the right of a shopping center owner to limit the First Amendment rights of citizens from being exercised near store entrances.
The European Commission's (EU) recent decision to file antitrust claims against six major U.S. film studios is an aggressive approach at dismantling how Hollywood does business. Even so, it comes as little surprise to antitrust experts given the regulatory agency's push to unify consumer access to digital products in the European Union.
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.
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.
On June 18, 2015, SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher wrote in a statement placed on the SEC website that the SEC was sending a "troubling message": Chief compliance officers (CCOs) should not take ownership of their firms' compliance policies and procedures, lest they be held accountable for conduct that is not really their responsibility.
The electronic format that electronically stored information is produced in is a necessary component of e-discovery. This article offers a primer on production format issues by diagramming a template request in order to explain both the technical meaning and practical significance of the terms.
