Written by: Cameron G. Shilling & Kevin Lin Published in the New Hampshire Business Review (2/9/17) and online at www.mclane.com Cyber attacks and costly accidental losses of sensitive personal and financial information are no longer confined to retailers like Target ...
Read More »#Hashingitout: Is It Worth Registering A Hashtag?
This article originally ran on blog.sandw.com. Recently, the Coca-Cola Company sought to register two hashtags as trademarks: #cokecanpics and #smilewithacoke. For those who may wonder why: various online social networking services (like Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, to name a few) ...
Read More »Phigenix v. ImmunoGen: IPR Challenger May Lack Standing to Appeal to Federal Circuit
February 2, 2017 Blogs, IP Law Bulletin Michael Visconti, III The America Invents Act (AIA) established a number of procedures for challenging a granted patent at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). While virtually anyone can challenge a patent ...
Read More »Steps for developing a settlement strategy for employment claims
Every time a current or former employee threatens or brings legal action, in-house counsel faces the question: Should we litigate or settle? But the question often is not as straightforward as it seems. If you forego an early settlement, will ...
Read More »Merck & Cie v. Gnosis: A more deferential standard of review for inter partes review decisions
On 11 October 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Merck & Cie’s petition for certiorari in Merck & Cie v. Gnosis S.p.A., No. 16–125, 2016 WL 4014485, at *1 (U.S. Oct. 11, 2016). With this, the debate about the proper ...
Read More »The attorney-client privilege in the age of email proliferation
We all know the allure of email. Easy, rapid, mobile, less intrusive than a phone call, less laborious than a letter, the supremely flexible and ubiquitous facilitator of communication. As generations raised on computers and email fill the ranks of ...
Read More »Trademark solicitation scams
Last month the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“the Office”) announced its cooperation in a Department of Justice investigation into a trademark scam perpetrated by two California men that defrauded about 4,446 people of $1.66 million. The investigation resulted ...
Read More »Massachusetts SJC strikes a blow to Massachusetts Independent Contractor Statute
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently held that the FAAAA preempts the second prong of the Massachusetts Independent Contractor Statute as applied to certain delivery drivers. Although the Court limited the scope of its decision, the decision is ...
Read More »Employers are thrown curve on new overtime regulations
If you shared with friends and family around your Thanksgiving table reasons to be grateful this year, here’s one you probably left out: the fact that you aren’t a management-side employment attorney. If you are such a lawyer, you would ...
Read More »Cautious optimism seen as equity crowdfunding begins
While there hasn’t exactly been a stampede to online exchanges, “equity crowdfunding” — a means of raising capital from throngs of non-accredited investors, many of modest means — is off to a somewhat promising start, according to local attorneys who ...
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