This article was published originally at InsideCounsel.com. The article is the fourth in a six-part series focusing on evidence spoliation. Read more about previous posts. Technology Law Source will notify readers as InsideCounsel.com publishes additional articles in this series. In its simplest terms, a legal hold (also known as a litigation hold, preservation order, suspension … Continue Reading
Our colleagues on our sister blogsite Federal Securities Law Blog have been tracking new and updated SEC regulations that could impact on the businesses of our readers. The articles in their most recent eBook SEC Updates: Keeping Ahead of the Regulatory Curve (which you can download here ) discuss three important SEC regulatory changes: compensation committee rules, conflict minerals reporting and … Continue Reading
Recently our sister blog The Employer Law Report told you about Vine, a mobile video application owned by Twitter that allows users to capture and share short looping six-second videos on Twitter. The app will no doubt cause corporations more social media headaches as employees start recording Vine workplace videos — especially with 13 million users … Continue Reading
In an ADA employment discrimination case, a federal court recently denied a defendant’s request to compel the plaintiff to provide authorizations for all of her social media accounts, but still ordered the production of any social media postings relevant to the plaintiff’s claimed emotional distress damages. See Giacchetto-v-Patchogue-MedfordUnion, No. CV 11-6323 (E.D.N.Y. May 6, 2013). … Continue Reading
In a long-awaited and much-anticipated decision, the US Supreme Court today issued a unanimous opinion in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., involving the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes relevant to detection of increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The Court held that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature … Continue Reading
This article was published originally at InsideCounsel.com. The article is the first in a six-part series focusing on evidence spoliation. Read part 2: Events courts consider when deciding if duty to preserve evidence has been triggered; and part 3: Preservation obligations after a duty to preserve has been triggered. Technology Law Source will notify readers … Continue Reading
Earlier this year, we wrote about a decision in which a federal district court rejected a proportionality argument and ordered the production of a defendant’s entire database because the information in the database was highly relevant to the plaintiff’s trademark infringement claim. Another federal district court recently came out differently in a trade secret misappropriation … Continue Reading
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a jury verdict awarding $26.2 million in compensatory damages and $18.2 million in punitive damages for trade secret misappropriation of software that enabled oil and gas companies to “plan, procure and pay for complex services” online. See Wellogix, Inc. v. Accenture, LLP, Case No. 11-20816 (5th Cir. … Continue Reading
The America Invents Act (AIA), which became fully implemented March 16, 2013, revised U.S. patent law but included few reforms directed to curbing Non-Practicing Entity (NPE) or “patent troll” activity. Thus, not surprisingly, patent troll activity has continued at an alarming rate during the early months of 2013. Summarized below are the recent activities of … Continue Reading
The Federal Judicial Center recently published the Sixth Edition of the Benchbook for U.S. District Court Judges. For the first time, the Benchbook includes a section on civil case management, including how to address e-discovery issues. The Benchbook also adds new jury instructions regarding the use of social media and electronic devices by jurors during … Continue Reading
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that an arbitrator did not exceed his powers when he expanded an eight-year license to use a video game’s trademarks into a perpetual license to use all the intellectual property rights associated with the game. See Timegate Studios, Inc. v. Southpeak Interactive, L.L.C., ___ F.3d ___, 2013 … Continue Reading
As businesses move more applications and data to cloud services (e.g., Google Apps for Business, Salesforce.com, Amazon S3, etc.), they inevitably are going to find themselves in litigation with the need to retrieve electronically stored information (ESI) from the cloud to comply with their e-discovery obligations. While the risks of e-discovery likely will not keep … Continue Reading
A federal court has ordered that “an instruction be given at trial to the jury that it may draw an adverse inference against Plaintiff for failing to preserve his Facebook account,” and for destroying evidence. See Gatto v. United Air Lines, Inc., No. 10-cv-1090, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 41909, slip op. at 11 (D.N.J. Mar. … Continue Reading
I find a certain irony in the current ubiquity of privacy-related topics when the concept was once defined (and not by current European thinking, but more than 120 years ago), as the “right to be let alone,” in “The Right to Privacy,” by Warren and Brandeis, 4 Harvard L.R. 193 (Dec. 15, 1890). Nonetheless, I … Continue Reading
A court in the Southern District of New York enjoined the defendants from selling fashion apparel in the United States that allegedly infringed the plaintiff’s trademarks, but it declined to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction to stop the defendants from using their Hong Kong website to continue selling the same apparel to the rest of the world. … Continue Reading
Though the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are “not meant to create a routine right of direct access to a party’s electronic information system,” a federal district court recently held that the benefits of allowing the plaintiff direct access to the defendant’s entire business database outweighed the burden of producing it. [See Advanced Tactical Ordnance … Continue Reading
"A thing of beauty" , as John Keats once wrote, may be "a joy forever", but works of art, whether they are sculptures, paintings, buildings, or books, do not last forever. Over time, delicate pigments fade, restoration or conservation attempts may go wrong, or objects of art may be attacked, such as the attack by … Continue Reading
Stating that it “will not presume the creation of jointly owned or non-exclusively licensed trademark rights,” the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that an individual defendant and his company did not retain any ownership rights in an unregistered trademark his company had acquired in an asset sale and then transferred in another asset … Continue Reading
Describing it as a “rather novel issue,” a federal court recently held that a former employee’s public posts on his personal Facebook page did not constitute solicitation of his former co-workers under the terms of his non-solicitation agreement with his former employer. [See Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. v. Cahill, No. 12-CV-346, Doc. 31 (Jan. 22, … Continue Reading
An Ohio appellate court recently overturned a trial court’s order that compelled the production and forensic examination of a non-party witness’s computers, hard drives, and cell phones because “a trial court abuses its discretion when it permits forensic imaging of electronic devices without first a showing that there has been a background of noncompliance with … Continue Reading
A federal district court recently awarded more than $12.4 million in attorneys’ fees to the defendants as “prevailing parties” based on its finding that the plaintiffs had pursued objectively baseless patent and trade secret misappropriation claims in bad faith. [See Gabriel Technologies Corp. v. Qualcomm Inc., No. 08 CV 1992, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14105 … Continue Reading
The amendments to the rule implementing COPPA have been met with varying degrees of celebration, skepticism, disappointment and confusion. The amendments change all aspects of the rule, though some to a greater degree than others. While a full understanding of the impact of the amendments will likely have to wait until we see how they … Continue Reading
1. Federal and State Courts Issued Decisions Approving the Use of “Computer-Assisted Review” AKA “Predictive Coding” or “Technology-Assisted Review.” Last year, numerous e-discovery commentators and vendors published articles and on-line resources and held seminars explaining how “computer-assisted review” (also known as “predictive coding” or “technology-assisted review”) works and discussing the expected benefits of using computer-assisted … Continue Reading
