Cramdown Interest Rates in Chapter 11
February 28, 2015
Recently, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York held, among other things, that debtors could cram down their plan of reorganization on their secured lenders under section 1129(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Bankruptcy Code by providing them with replacement notes paying a below-market interest rate using a formula approach to calculate the applicable interest rate. This article analysis this decision.
Trends in Enterprise Legal Management
February 28, 2015
In this roundtable conversation, Marcus Hartmann , General Counsel, RB (formerly known as Reckitt Benckiser) and Jason Parkman, CEO, Mitratech, discuss trends in enterprise legal management, the tools it provides users, and the increased controls brought to legal departments using this technology.
Obama Calls for Industry's Cooperation On Cybersecurity
February 28, 2015
President Barack Obama signed an executive order on Feb. 13 promoting information-sharing between the private sector and the government in an effort to combat the rising number of security hacks and data breaches.
In the Spotlight: Credit Tenant Lease Financing
February 28, 2015
While credit tenant loans represent a relatively small scope of overall financing transactions, they are a noteworthy addition to the finance realm due to their creative structures and strong performance. As various financial sources predict that the commercial real estate finance sector is expected to continue on its upward swing, there is a sense that a wider breath of financing structures will be attractive to lenders.
Castle Defense
February 28, 2015
The battle over expert testimony on patent damages harkens back to the middle ages when would-be attackers developed new strategies for laying siege to a castle, defensive counter-measures were developed to thwart those siege tactics. As plaintiffs have introduced expert testimony based on novel patent damages theories, defendants have asked courts to fulfill their gatekeeping role by preventing certain types of expert testimony from reaching the jury.
Franchisor Wins IP Dispute
February 28, 2015
In bankruptcy, the debtor is entitled to reject (not perform) burdensome contracts. For franchise agreements that contain trademark licenses, the effects of rejection are decided on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes the licensees of the trademarks can continue to use the trademarks over the objection of the franchisor and sometimes not. This issue arose in the Crumbs Bake Shop case in connection with the sale of its assets.
Time Tracker by eBillity
February 28, 2015
For more than a decade we tracked our lawyers' time and generated bills using various iterations of Sage Timeslips, which ran on a backend server tucked away in our office. But over the last several years, we noticed Timeslips began to slow down. It reached the point that time tracking and billing, an unpleasant and time-consuming distraction at the best of times, became far more painful than it needed to be.
