Under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, several new mechanisms allow third parties to challenge patent applications and patents. Among these is a new preissuance submission procedure by which members of the general public may submit prior art believed to be relevant to a pending patent application.
For legal professionals, the only real choice remains Apple's iPad. The wide selection of legal-specific apps for the iPad cannot be matched by competing Android tablets. Whether intended or not, Apple is winning that market. However, with success comes responsibility, and when it comes to lawyers, accountability, security and saving time is extremely important when serving clients. Here are my "best-practice" recommendations and tips to make the most effective and safest use of iPads for lawyers.
As the Internet matures, so does the nature of intellectual property legal services required by Internet users. Initially, IP legal services were primarily in demand to facilitate Internet startups. Today, requests for enforcement of Internet IP rights appears to be overtaking calls for legal services related to licensing Internet IP.
Creating a brand name that is trademark-worthy and can be defended in the market requires a thoughtful strategy. The standards of the USPTO for trademark registration are nuanced, and the wrong choice of words can make it challenging to obtain a defensible registered mark.
Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) programs, which allow employees to use their personally owned smartphones, tablets and laptops in and out of the work environment, are significantly changing information technology (IT). Law firms around the country are embracing BYOD as it lets executives and employees use the mobile devices, service providers and operating platforms of their choice.
Perhaps fueled in part by consumer confidence exhibited in an increase in auto sales, lower gasoline prices, and an apparently recovering construction sector, retail e-commerce rode a rising wave in the Third Quarter, up an estimated 3.7% from the second quarter and 17.3% from the third quarter of 2011, the government revealed last month.
If corporate counsel has good lines of communication and support from internal information technology and/or e-discovery personnel, they likely will not need to maintain an in-depth understanding of specific databases and applications. Counsel should, however, understand several key database principles that can affect the discovery process.
On Nov. 23, this year's Black Friday, online retail sales tipped over the $1 billion spending brim for the first time, with consumers picking up holiday bargains topping out at $1.042 billion on the Internet, according to comScore, a digital-activity measurement company.
The social and mobile game industry is experiencing rapid growth as thousands of gaming companies and developers make their games available on iTunes, Facebook and other platforms in the hope of launching the next FarmVille or Angry Birds. The popularity of social and mobile games is expected to expand as sales of tablet computers and smartphones rise. In this competitive landscape, it is not uncommon to find new games that are similar to established popular games, even bearing similar names and features.
The BYOD movement sprang up from employees' desire to have and use their own choice of a smartphone and to be able to better mix their business and work lives. Yet, this modern-day nod to the 19th Century company town has its dark sides.
