Law, Strategy, and Risk in Commercial Disputes
Blawgletter's favorite Bloomberg columnist, Jonathan Weil, today takes keyboard in hand to tell us why the Securities and Exchange Commission just sued Goldman Sachs for civil fraud – "Goldman Serves One Master Better Than the Others". He teases with this:
Who knew the folks at the SEC still had it in them to accuse
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Blawgletter likes Associate Justice David Souter. Lots of people do. Today he gave us further reason.
He wrote for his former court of appeals:
SOUTER, Associate Justice. Three principals organized the appellant, Take It Away, Inc., to act as a broker in a contemplated business of supplying dumpsters that do-it-yourselfers could rent
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Stephen Colbert (courtesy of NPR) explains the meaning of backsies thus:
Mr. COLBERT: Backsies is the technical term for reneging on a previously settled agreement.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. COLBERT: We've all done backsies, asking for the return of your Barbie doll or baseball card. In fact, 50 percent of all American marriages end
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The Ninth Circuit yesterday upheld a judgment that a software writer wrote software as an "employee" of JustMed, Inc., a start-up company that set out to make a "digital audio larynx", rather than as an "independent contractor". The distinction made a difference because federal copyright law deems the works of an employee the property of…
Online vendors sell lots of Tiffany goods through eBay. But some of the stuff that some of them hawk never knew the inside of a Tiffany store or warehouse. They do commerce in fake Tiffany, Blawgletter means.
eBay makes money from such sales by charging fees for listing offers and, via its PayPal service, for processing…
Last November, on the day the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in an Investment Company Act case over fees that mutual funds pay their advisers, Blawgletter wrote:
Supremes Listen to Fee Fight
The U.S. Supreme Court today heard what "fiduciary" means for an investment adviser when it charges mutual funds more than institutional investors pay for
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Among the named linkage groups was –CH=CH–CH2–NH– (the same group recited in the patents’ dependent claims) and –NH–(CH2)6–NH– (a new group that is not found in the specification and which contains only single bonds).
Enzo Biochem, Inc. v. Applera Corp., No. 09-1281, slip op. at 15-16 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 26…
You know something odd has happened in the law when a court takes 38 pages to say a basic thing — like that a patent must describe the invention it aims to cover.
The 11-judge Federal Circuit did just that today, 9-2. The court held that 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, "contains a written description…
The farm boy on Odom's Tennessee Pride Sausage logos show him at an angle from the viewer, wearing a Pilgrim's hat, holding a stick over his right shoulder, smiling with his mouth open, waving with his left hand (index finger pointing up), and sporting bare feet.
Fresh Farm Supermarket's image portrays a farm boy facing straight ahead, with…
The Federal Communications Commission, in Blawgletter's view, has done a not-very-good job of curbing abuses by Titans of Telecom — your Wizards of Wireless, your Imperators of the Internet, and — yes — your Caliphs of Cable.
But the FCC did okay in 2007, when the Commissioners voted to extend a rule that bars big cable outfits from…