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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has confirmed that there is no patent infringement liability under 35 U.S.C. 271(g)(1) for the offshore use of a "research tool" patent when only the information gained from such offshore use is introduced into the United States.

The fundamental responsibility of the board of directors of a corporation is to oversee and supervise the management of the corporation's business. All directors of a corporation, whether or not "independent," owe fiduciary obligations to the company and its stockholders. These fiduciary obligations include the duty of care and the duty of loyalty, and, within these duties, a duty of disclosure. The precise enunciation of these fiduciary obligations varies among states. The following discussion is based on the law of Delaware, in which a large proportion of public companies are incorporated.

Recent rulings of importance to you and your practice.

The increasing distribution of forms, procedures, rules, laws, and opinions in electronic format suggests that for certain legal materials it has become appropriate to look for a Web site early in the research process. A selected list of Web sites useful to attorneys engaged in litigating land use issues or drafting land use plans appears below. All sites should be viewed critically for accuracy and reliability of the information. It is important to remember that materials that are even a few years old may be excluded; the scope of coverage may be limited; and often a citation, name, or date is needed as an access point because the Web site content is not searchable.

While the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C.S. '1051, adequately addresses the legal difficulties associated with bad faith registration of trademarked names by non-trademark holders, e-exploitation of trademarks is still a problem for trademark holders.

Just as the reinvigorated Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed its third wave of lawsuits to thwart the trading of copyrighted music…

More than 35 states have enacted laws regulating spam in some form or fashion. Legitimate marketers and businesses adapted to these various state laws, gravitating toward a fairly uniform best practices model, which stopped short of the sort of true "opt-in only" model strongly preferred by consumer and anti-spam groups. Mailers could be fairly confident that they would avoid liability under state spam laws and not overly alienate Internet service providers (ISPs) or their own customers by simply including valid contact information, honoring "opt-out" requests, providing accurate headers and routing information, using nondeceptive subject lines and (in a few states) labeling the messages as advertisements. This widely followed compliance strategy became unworkable in September 2003, however, when California instead enacted a true "opt-in" approach to commercial e-mail marketing. Marketers were faced with a January 2004 compliance deadline and sweeping new prohibitions on marketing to or from any California e-mail address unless the sender had the recipient's "direct consent" or had a "pre-existing business relationship" with the recipient (and the recipient had not "opted out" of such mailings). In response, legitimate marketers aggressively lobbied Congress to accelerate final passage of federal legislation to pre-empt at least the more disruptive aspects of California's new law prior to its effective date. Congress responded to the call, and the CAN SPAM Act of 2003 was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Dec. 16, 2003.

Most people have heard of remote access and wireless Internet, two terms that could be, but aren't always, interchangeable. But from a practical standpoint, how do they apply to the common practitioner?

An employer does not violate the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by digging through an employee's e-mails in computer storage, since the law bans an "interception" only if it occurs at the time of transmission, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.

Four months ago when I was asked to become Editor-in-Chief of <i>Marketing The Law Firm</i>, I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to engage a wonderful group of authors; select an outstanding Board of Editors; and moderate the first of what I hope will be many exciting and interesting Web audio seminars. As I look back on the last four months, I think the one thing that stands out in my mind is the fact that we had so many wonderful contributors to the newsletter. So I thought that we might take a look at the last 4 months and some of the highlights. Although I would love to be able to select all of the articles we've published, given the constraints of space, I am only able to pick two from each issue to feature. In case you missed reading these issues, we'll give you a nutshell version of these articles. I would also be remiss if I didn't say how much I appreciated the efforts of Russ Lawson and Mike O'Horo, whose monthly columns provided all of us with a look at the intricacies of marketing both in a law firm setting and to smaller firms and solos. And as we look forward, we'll take a look at what's coming up and a preview of our editorial calendar.