New England Biz Law Update

The Great Resignation — a massive reshuffling ongoing in the U.S. labor market — has created a new and very competitive economic reality in which American employers struggle to fill a record number of open jobs. In such a challenging ...

Since Dec. 18, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has accepted two new types of ex parte proceedings to be filed for trademark purposes: expungement and reexamination. When these new proceedings were first proposed and announced, many practitioners were ...

Disciplining and terminating employees are realities of doing business, but by adhering to certain practices, employers can help reduce the risk of costly litigation. Discipline or termination (often referred to as “adverse employment actions”) can give rise to allegations of ...

Before March 2020, force majeure provisions in real estate contracts were seldom implemented, and sometimes received minimal attention in real estate contract negotiations. Such provisions are meant to cover contracting parties against unforeseeable events that are outside the control of ...

Copyrights, patents and trademarks — although registered by the hopeful future trademark-holder — are largely for the benefit of the public. More accurately, they are for the benefit of the consumer. A client’s trademark designates to the consumer the source ...

In recent years, we have witnessed a swift transformation as more of our finances have been brought online. Growth in digital banking accelerated during the COVID-19 lockdowns out of necessity, but this added convenience led to a new set of ...

A media company salesperson has failed in her bid for a declaration that her noncompete with her former employer is invalid. The defendant employer was entitled to summary disposition because there was no actual controversy over whether the agreement could ...

Disciplining and terminating employees are realities of doing business, but by adhering to certain practices, employers can help reduce the risk of costly litigation. Discipline or termination (often referred to as “adverse employment actions”) can give rise to allegations of ...

No-poach provisions are agreements that prohibit one company from hiring another company’s employees. This article addresses whether no-poach provisions violate applicable antitrust laws, and more specifically, the conditions under which no-poach provisions are legal. No-poach provisions are often horizontal restraints; ...

A federal court judge has ordered a town that retained an attorney to investigate an employee’s hostile work environment complaints to respond to discovery requests about the investigation. Plaintiff Jennifer Berry Brown brought claims under Title VII and the Family ...