To Stay or Not to Stay: That Is the Re-examination Question
August 31, 2006
The <i>NTP v. RIM</i> case is the latest example of a conundrum facing defendants: how to strategize the confluence of a district court litigation and a Patent Office re-examination proceeding. A district court litigation and a patent office re-examination proceeding both provide methods for challenging the validity of a patent.
Nip Compliance Issues in the Bud
August 31, 2006
Good business practice in the e-commerce sector, as in the bricks-and-mortar world, requires that companies take steps to ensure that employees comply with company policies, as well as with the laws, rules and regulations that apply to them and their industry. An increasingly important part of that practice involves monitoring and storing electronic documents, including e-mails and their attachments, and managing these documents throughout the information lifecycle. While an electronic document may have a direct business use of only a few minutes ' perhaps to signal agreement to a contract term ' this same document may have an afterlife of many years, during which it must be retained and managed.
Legal Technology Training Needs New Approach
August 31, 2006
Software trainers find the need for computer training never-ending. In many firms, including law firms that advise e-commerce counsel, training programs abound, but users don't seem to be gaining ground fast enough to master the array of desktop applications.
FTC Signs Off on Internet Legal Referrals
August 31, 2006
It may not be a match made in heaven, but Internet legal-referral services that promise to match lawyers with potential clients have a powerful new admirer ' the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
e-Commerce Contracts: Boilerplate or Common Sense?
August 31, 2006
Do clients actually read the contracts that lawyers write? Even if your carefully drafted documents are read, do you ever feel that they don't make a difference in how decisions are made, or cases get decided? To paraphrase the Miranda warning immortalized by Sgt. Joe Friday and a long line of TV police officers, sometimes the contract you write can and will be used against you in a court of law ' as happened to a company that tried to enforce a boilerplate rule against a former employee that even its own executives didn't follow.
Inventor Notebooks in Patent Proceedings
August 31, 2006
Since 2000, the number of patent applications filed each year in the United States has been in the range of 300,000 ' 375,000, increasing by approximately 10,000 per year. <i>See USPTO U.S. Patent Statistics Calendar Years 1963-2004</i>. At the same time, the number of interference proceedings and infringement suits has also increased. Establishing a priority date for the invention is at the heart of all interference proceedings and is frequently an issue during prosecution and in infringement suits. When sufficient proof is supplied, a priority date based on a date of 'invention' that is earlier than the presumptive priority date, based upon the date of the filing of the application, may be established. Thus corroborative evidence supporting a date of invention, or the lack thereof, is a significant factor in the outcome of many cases and may expedite prosecution for even those patents and applications that steer clear of these disputes.
A National Breach Law Is Inevitable
August 31, 2006
On July 21, the Financial Data Protection Act (H.R. 3997) was reported out of the House Financial Services Committee. If passed, this act would impose a business-friendly, national standard for the protection of private consumer data, and notification of consumers in the event of a data-security breach. Although the House leadership sought a quick floor vote on the bill, fierce opposition from consumer groups forced the vote to be rescheduled until after the summer recess. Despite this delay, a number of factors seem to be converging that will make a national data-breach law inevitable.
Background Checks: The New Burden of Proof
August 31, 2006
Negligent hiring cases typically turn on whether a background check that was forgone would have helped to reveal an employee's propensity to erupt in violence or commit fraud. But a new burden of proof may be on the horizon.
