Features
Kevin Adler
In the last several years, private investment groups and wealthy, experienced business owners have showed increased interest in purchasing franchisees. At the same time, food and retail franchisors have moved more deeply into developing units at nontraditional locations. These twin developments have been, for the most part, highly positive for the franchising industry. However, both trends have raised one major challenge for franchisors: negotiating contract terms that deviate from their standard FDD.
Features
Matthew Siegal
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Irah H. Donner
In <i>Biosig Instruments, Inc. v. Nautilus, Inc.</i>, the Federal Circuit held that the functional claim language of "spaced relationship" was definite in view of the inherent parameters of the claimed apparatus, notwithstanding the lack of any specific quantification of exactly how wide the spacing should be.
Features
Michael S. Elkin
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Thomas P. Lane
The DMCA prohibits the circumvention of digital rights management technologies and other similar content access or copy restrictions on copyrighted works. As such, it has long been understood that the circumvention of computer programs to enable interoperability of non-approved software applications ' a practice commonly referred to as "jailbreaking" ' was forbidden under the DMCA.
Features
David K. Mitnick
This articlelooks at the implications of the new gTLD program for attorneys and the Internet as a whole.
Tony Mauro
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment.
Features
Michael Flanagan
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Adrian White
UK Lord Justice Jackson's case management and litigation cost reforms are the most earth-shattering developments in recent UK civil procedure history, with serious ramifications that extend across the pond to U.S. companies.
Features
Jodi E. Lopez
In recent years, the SEC has brought far fewer revenue recognition and other financial reporting cases than it had historically. That leads us naturally to wonder whether this trend will continue in the future. Not likely.
Features
Sean A. Monroe, Jeannine Tang, Silvia Vannini
For entertainment, sports and media (ESM) industries bidders ' and their counsel ' contemplating a merger-and-acquisition deal, last year's Delaware Supreme Court decision in <i>RAA Management LLC v. Savage Sport Holdings Inc.</i> highlighted the importance of assessing risk early in the due diligence process.
Features
Jenna Greene
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Catharine Dunn
On May 15, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent letters to more than 90 businesses, informing them that they could potentially be in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) when changes to the law go into effect on July 1.
Features
Jonathan Bick
The '<i>Dendrite</i> test,' has discouraged lawsuits whose real objective is identifying anonymous speakers. Prior to <i>Dendrite</i>, thousands of lawsuits were filed each year seeking to identify Internet speakers, and enforcement of subpoenas was almost automatic. Since <i>Dendrite</i>, both the number of lawsuits designed to identify Internet speakers and the automatic nature of the enforcement of those subpoenas has declined due to the broad application of Dendrite. Recently, an appellate court in <i>Warren Hospital v. John Does (1-10)</i> has limited the application of <i>Dendrite</i>.
