Litigation

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Statute of Limitations Did Not Bar Foreclosure Action Nuisance Claim Arising Out of Environmental Remediation Not Barred By Statute of Limitations Mortgage Contingency Clause Did Not Give Buyer Right to Cancel Mortgagor Did Not Prove Damages Arising Out of RESPA Violation Questions of Fact Preclude Summary Judgment on Whether Adverse Possession Extinguished Easement

Features

This article discusses the jurisprudence applied to determining patent eligibility of claims for diagnostic methods, and the expectation for changes in analysis of patent eligibility under §101 in the near future.

Features

Documents are the lifeblood of any law firm. The documents that a firm produces are its greatest asset, especially the intellectual property — trade secrets, patent information, etc. — contained in those documents, yet firms historically have not made sufficient efforts to safeguard those documents from both internal and external threats.

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It's a common fact pattern: A songwriter alleges that another songwriter has infringed the lyrics of Song A by using a similar short phrase, frequently a current slang phrase, in the lyrics of Song B. Claims like this do not often succeed because "words and short phrases such as names, titles, and slogans" are "not subject to copyright."

Columns & Departments

Federal Circuit Holds PTAB Judges Unconstitutional, Constructs a Fix—But Not All Judges Agree on What Happens Next

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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.

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In November, the DOJ asked a federal district court to terminate the Paramount Consent Decrees, a set of rules governing major film studios for the last 70 years. In effect, these rules prohibited movie studios from owning downstream movie theaters and banned a variety of vertical agreements, such as block booking — the practice of bundling multiple films into one theater license.

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A federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of a Philadelphia lawyer's suit alleging that Los Angeles litigation boutique Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht acted in bad faith by failing to follow through with a $160,000 settlement in a dispute over attorney fees.