Canola oil comes from what?
The Federal Circuit today affirmed a summary and final judgment declaring two canola oil patents unenforceable and another two invalid. In Cargill, Inc. v. Canbra Foods, Ltd., Nos. 2006-1265 & 2006-1302 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 14, 2007), the court found no error in the district court’s conclusions that Cargill engaged
Blawgletter fell in love with simplicity long ago, and naturally we want to make finding us as simple as possible. So now you can go straight to our location by typing "blawgletter.com" in the Address line of your browser and hitting Enter.
The more adventurous of Blawgletter readers may want to try "blawgletter.biz", "blawgletter.net", or
This morning, a class (er, "caucus"?) of Iowa consumers and businesses announced their settlement of an antitrust case against Microsoft, according to the NYT. The class sought to recover overcharges of up to $453 million. Iowa declined to accept its part of an earlier settlement and had started trying its case against Microsoft. The
Silence = best chance.
Thanks no doubt to Blawgletter’s advice ("Don’t Call Scooter"), the defense in the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby perjury and obstruction trial will not call Mr. Libby as a witness, according to news reports. Nor will they put Mr. Libby’s former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, on the stand.
Final
The Second Circuit declined to dismiss an interlocutory appeal from a district court’s refusal to compel arbitration under the doctrine of equitable estoppel. The doctrine requires a party who didn’t sign an arbitration agreement to arbitrate anyway. The court rejected the argument that the absence of an agreement, in writing, with the party resisting arbitration
What would William O. Douglas think of
current SEC Chairman Cox?
Blawgletter took former SEC commissioner (and current Stanford law professor) Joseph A. Grundfest to task last week for misunderestimating the true reasons for a recent fall-off in securities class actions. The professor’s arguments, Blawgletter believed, aimed at glorifying government enforcement of securities laws while
The King of the Road.
Today, the Sixth Circuit upheld the timeliness of copyright ownership and infringement claims relating to songs that singer-songwriter Roger Miller wrote in 1964. The court also affirmed the district court’s ruling that Sony owns the copyright in pre-1964 works as assignee. But the Sixth Circuit held that Sony did not
The First Circuit today reversed the dismissal of claims (for breach of contract, professional negligence, and negligent misrepresentation) against a firm that, according to the complaint, appraised the Portland Shellfish Company, Inc., at less than half of its value. The decision turned on whether the plaintiff, the seller of Portland shares under a "buy-sell" agreement
Tax shelter — or trap?
The Ninth Circuit today reverses the dismissal of a complaint for common law fraud and conspiracy against an accounting firm, a law firm, and others that the plaintiff alleges deceived him into buying a sham tax shelter. Swartz v. KPMG, No. (9th Cir. Feb. 12, 2007). Theodore Swartz paid
