United States Supreme Court

High Court Rejects Application of Bob Roberts Rule Federal courts should "turn to state law to resolve" a "fight over a tax refund," held a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Rodriquez v. FDIC (In re United W Bancorp., Inc.)

In a recent, unanimous opinion authored by Justice Ginsburg, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed lower court decisions holding that a bankruptcy court order denying a motion for relief from the automatic stay constitutes a final order that must be appealed within the time provided under Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 8002.

In 2013, the PTO adopted a new policy under which any party commencing a de novo proceeding challenging a PTO decision would be responsible to pay a pro rata share of the salaries of the government attorneys working on the matter. On Dec. 11, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the PTO's new interpretation of the Patent Act and held that the American Rule, a centuries-old principle under which each party bears its own attorneys' fees, does apply to this statute.

In Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com LLC, the U.S. Supreme Court held that, under 17 U.S.C. §411(a), "registration occurs, and a copyright claimant may commence an infringement suit, when the Copyright Office registers a copyright" — that is, acts on a registration application, rather than when an applicant delivers the registration materials to the Copyright Office.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Liu v. Securities and Exchange Commission to address a question that, until fairly recently, seemed clear: whether the SEC has authority to obtain disgorgement in civil actions to enforce the federal securities laws.

In recent years, practitioners have observed a tension between criminal enforcement of the broadly written terms of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the modern Supreme Court's notions of statutory interpretation and due process in the criminal law context. A certiorari petition filed in late August in Sanchez et al. v. United States, asks the Supreme Court to address this tension, as embodied in the judge-made per se rule.

Part Two of a Two-Part Article In Part One of this article last month, we discussed several of the key business crimes cases from the recently concluded October Term 2018. We resume this discussion in Part Two of our article and offer some concluding thoughts about where the Court may go next in the years to come.

The U.S. Supreme Court has jumped into a titanic copyright battle between Oracle Corp. and Google LLC with both barrels. The court's involvement is sure to reignite a 50-year-old debate over how much, if any, software should be subject to copyright, and the contours of the fair use defense in the digital age.