AttorneysEd Center

In a very closely watched decision, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the "fair use" defense raised against a charge of copyright infringement by the artist Richard Prince. Anthony LoCicero of Amster, Rothstein and Ebenstein LLP analyzes this decision and comments on its impact on the applicability of the fair use defense to all forms of copyrightable works.

In its Kirtsaeng decision, the Supreme Court extended the First Sale Doctrine to copyrighted works sold abroad. Anthony F LoCicero of Amster, Rothstein & Ebenstein discusses the implications of this case, not only for copyrighted works, but also for its potential implications to trademark and patent law.

With the explosive growth of mobile applications, companies and their counsel are scrambling to keep pace with the myriad compatibility, privacy, licensing, and implementation issues that come with these types of applications. Join Aaron Tantleff of Foley & Lardner LLP as he discusses and shares the legal risks involved in developing, launching and managing mobile applications in 2013 and beyond, including: • Real-life examples of a mobile application program that spun out of control and what can be done to prevent and mitigate the issues; • Issues regarding data collected through applications (i.e., personal data and geolocation), and data-sharing agreements, data collection, and e-discovery issues; • Application store trademarks and copyrights; • Risks companies face regarding ownership, license agreements, developer agreements, transaction processing agreements, and bundling arrangements with carriers and device distributors; • Top factors delaying application launches; • The uncertainties that arise when creating a mobile application and the implications for other departments of a company;

Even as the understanding and prevalence of the Cloud continues to escalate and as companies continue to migrate data and services to the Cloud, counsel for many companies are still attempting to review contacts for cloud services as if they were software contracts or fail to understand and appreciate issues regarding security, performance, availability, disaster recovery and business continuity. In addition, many fail to properly appreciate the implementation process or the effort involved to move to another vendor and thus, fail to consider the costs of signing on and how it may lock the company in with the vendor as switching vendors may be cost prohibitive. Join Matt Karlyn and Aaron Tantleff of Foley & Lardner LLP as they discuss some of the more significant issues that arise during negotiations with cloud providers and how to effectively negotiate terms and mitigate risks.

In M&A transactions, the results of a legal due diligence investigation can significantly impact the terms of the transaction and in some cases, whether the deal even moves forward. Proper intellectual property due diligence investigation may lead to the restructuring of a deal, change in the purchase price, reaching out to third parties or walking away from the deal. However, in many deals, the intellectual property assets are the only material assets or represent the key assets driving the deal, and unfortunately, all too often the documentation supporting a target's intellectual property assets (or lack thereof) are overlooked or not reviewed, because of the erroneous assumption that a target company outright owns all key intellectual property, and that such intellectual property will transfer automatically upon the close of the deal, or that any defects that may exist with respect to the intellectual property can be cured with standard representations,

Michael Kasdan provides an overview of Section 337 Actions before the ITC, including initiating actions with the ITC complaint, discovery, motion practice and summary determination motions, the role of OUII /staff counsel and remedies and resolution. In addition, the program focuses on key recent developments in ITC jurisprudence, including the satisfaction of the domestic industry requirement by non-practicing entities and the availability of exclusion orders on essential patents for which FRAND commitments have been made.

Commencing patent infringement suits against an alleged infringer in more than one jurisdiction may provide a patentee with major strategic advantages. However, a successful global patent litigation campaign requires complex strategic planning that takes into account the differences between key jurisdictions in timing, procedure and substantive patent law. Anthony Lo Cicero of Amster, Rothstein & Ebenstein LLP analyzes and explains these strategic issues and provides global patent litigation case studies.

In October of 2012, the USPTO issued a notice of proposed rule-making proposing to replace the current USPTO ethics rules, which are based on the ABA Model Code, with a version of the ABA Model Rules. Join Michael Kasdan for a discussion of the differences between the newly proposed rules and the present regime as well as other ethical issues pertaining to practice before the USPTO.

Join Dan Foster and Leigh Martinson, McDermott Will & Emery LLP, as they explain and discuss the America Invents Act's newly-established procedures (which became effective September 16, 2012) for Inter Partes Review. These procedures provide alternatives to litigation to challenge the validity of a patent issued by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).

The question of what subject matter is eligible to be protected by a patent under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and what subject matter is an unpatentable law of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract idea has been brought to the forefront in a number of recent cases. The Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Mayo Collborative Servs. v. Promethueus Labs., Inc. (Mayo) relates to whether certain medical diagnostic methods are patent-eligible or unpatentable “laws of nature.” The Federal Circuit’s decision in Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. USPTO and Myriad Genetics (Myriad) (August 16, 2012), remanded for reconsideration by the Supreme Court after Mayo, addresses the patent eligibility of isolated DNA and related diagnostic methods. Join Michael J. Kasdan of Amster, Rothstein & Ebenstein LLP, as he discusses the impact of Mayo and Myriad in determining what pharmaceutical and biotechnology products and methods may be patented. And because Mayo and Myriad are also part of