New England Biz Law Update

Does a company automatically own a patent to an invention invented by an employee who uses company resources and on company time? Or, if a company hires an independent consultant to create a design, does a company automatically own a ...

[Editor’s note: This is the first segment of a six-part series – Succeeding In-House – by Christopher Mirabile, general counsel at IONA Technologies in Waltham, Mass., in which he will explain why basic legal skills are not enough for long-term ...

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently declined an opportunity to expand the circumstances in which the corporate form may be disregarded. The court in Scott v. NG U.S. 1, Inc. et al., 450 Mass. 760, 881 N.E. 2d 1125 (2008), ...

I have avoided the subject of executive compensation since writing two articles in this space in 2006, primarily because so much has been written about it elsewhere. But it is hard to avoid a six-ton gorilla, while looking for another, ...

Newspapers these days are full of stories about reduced profits, job losses, and cost cutting by large and small employers. The most recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 80,000 jobs disappeared in March, the third consecutive ...

Conducting an intellectual property audit is an important business process. It can provide information to a potential investor or acquirer or licensee of a company about the company’s IP positions and risks. More specifically, it can insure that a company’s ...

The 9/11 terrorist attack and extreme weather events such as Hurricane Katrina show that a company’s normal operations can be suddenly and unexpectedly delayed or halted for extended periods of time. 3Com Corporation in Marlborough, Mass., faced such a situation ...

The job of corporate counsel is never easy, but sometimes the difficulties approach nightmarish proportions. This article examines the interplay of moral and legal ethics revealed in the recent federal prosecution of Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (Chiquita) for authorizing payments ...

Despite several months of economic doldrums, the brisk pace of in-house hiring continues unabated, partly because the costs of expanding legal staffs look increasingly attractive compared to rising outside counsel costs.

In-house lawyers working in Massachusetts but licensed elsewhere will have to register and pay a registration fee annually to the Board of Bar Overseers under a new ethics rule adopted by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.