Today the Supreme Court ruled five-to-four that "enemy combatants" in lock-up at Guantanamo Bay may challenge the lawfulness of their detentions by way of seeking the writ of habeas corpus. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, gave an overview of his 70-page opinion thus:
Petitioners present a question not resolved by our earlier cases relating
When marketing leads to price-fixing.
Blawgletter recently got an email about lawyer marketing. It included an article that promised help on getting "’top dollar’ for your work", avoiding "under pricing yourself", and overcoming the fear of "rais[ing] your fees".
Hmmm. But as we skimmed down the html page, alarm bells started going off. For under
Patent owners beware — no downstream royalties for you.
In Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., No. 06-937 (U.S. June 9, 2008), the Court extended the doctrine of patent exhaustion to "method" patents. It also held that the doctrine barred collection of royalties from a downstream user of products in which the patent
Justice Thomas wrote the opinion for a 9-0 Court.
Today a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act doesn’t require a plaintiff to show reliance on underlying fraud. The plaintiff may satisfy the causal element under RICO simply by proving that the predicate act proximately caused injury to its
FTC v. Intel. Symbolically.
The Federal Trade Commission announced a formal investigation into possible anticompetitive conduct by Intel, which makes and sells 80-90 percent of computer brains in the U.S. The unveiling, per the NYT, follows months of stalling by the former top FTC Commissioner, who now works as general counsel at Procter
A CBS Outdoor (formerly Viacom) railroad trestle sign.
A federal jury awarded two billboard companies, Craig Outdoor and Midwest Outdoor, $125,000 each in tort damages against Viacom for swiping billboard sites that it tricked them into identifying. Acting as agent for several railroads, Viacom asked for applications to build the big signs on rights of
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch may find less to grin about under a Barack Obama presidency.
Tonight, Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic nomination for President.
What sort of antitrust policy would he bring to the U.S. Department of Justice? A far more assertive one, Blawgletter thinks.
On May 18, the candidate said, according to Reuters
Confectionery giant Mars, Incorporated, and a subsidiary, Mars Electronic International, Inc., sued Coin Acceptors for infringing patents on technology that recognizes coins electronically and allows vending machines to drop correct change into the tray. The district court found infringement and ordered Coinco to pay a reasonable royalty of seven percent for the period 1996 through
Why do people kill themselves? Does self-destruction ever make sense? And who can say what caused a specific person — Lance Dowell, say — to hang himself after hospital doctors negligently failed to urge him to stay for psychological treatment?
If you think a jury ought to hear all the evidence and render a verdict
Abraham Lincoln liked jury trials just fine.
Last February, Blawgletter reported a steep decline in Texas state court jury trials in civil cases. In 1996, district court juries rendered 2,971 verdicts but only 1,428 during 2006 — a drop of 52 percent. District judges also directed verdicts 253 times in 1996 but 473 times in