Blawgletter has never hidden our enchantment with patent law. Just today, the Federal Circuit made our heart beat faster yet again. It held, 2-1, a patent invalid but possibly enforceable. What joy!
Phrases like "obviousness-type double patenting" and "unenforceable based on inequitable conduct" may prompt a scratching-of-the-head in others, but they have no such affect
Okay, get this. You buy stock in a company for $10 a share. You sell it months later for $6 a share. Have you suffered a loss? Yep. If somebody induced you to purchase by lying about the company’s financial condition, can you get your money back from him? It depends.
Why does it depend?
Kang and Kodos hitchhiking.
Do you like to make people laugh? Do you enjoy early Woody Allen movies, especially Sleeper? Have you often heard people praising your wit? And do you like everything about practicing law except for the clients, the judges, and your colleagues, particularly that partner who never fails to give you
A U.S. District Judge yesterday approved a plea bargain in which a drug company and its principal principals agreed to pay $634.5 million for lying about the addictiveness of a pain-killer, OxyContin. The company apparently owes $600 million and the individuals the rest.
Blawgletter marvels that nobody got prison time to think, penitently, about the
Dear Blawgers and Blawg Fans:
If you answered any of the questions "yes" or "uh, give me a second", Blawgletter begs your assistance in making Blawg
Alfonso Bedoya played Gold Hat in
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
Gold Hat, posing as a Federale, replies to a question about his group’s official credentials:
Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!
Bedlam ensued.
Barry Barnett
Happy stinkin’
The Eighth Circuit today considered how to apply the crime-fraud exception to privilege in the context of a grand jury investigation. The government sought to pierce the attorney-client and attorney work product privileges on the ground that the client hoodwinked his lawyer into presenting a false explanation of the client’s conduct. The district court ordered
Cosmetic Gallery alleged that suppliers of salon beauty products boycotted it to prevent it from competing with Beauty Bar. The district court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the ground that Cosmetic Gallery hadn’t shown an unlawful concert of action among the defendants. The Third Circuit affirmed. Cosmetic Gallery, Inc. v. Schoeneman Corp.
Now Blawgletter understands the theory by which a president may dismiss U.S. Attorneys who did a terrific job. As a lawyer who worked in a previous Republican administration explained, "U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president’s will." The president’s will emits them; they flow from his will and, logically, cease to exist when
U.S. District Judge John Bates today ousted Valerie Plame’s case against VP Dick Cheney for outing her secret CIA identity. He held that Mr. Cheney and the other defendants outed her, if at all, while performing their official duties.