Exposing Individual Issues Regarding Consent Can Help Defeat Class Certification
Recent decisions suggest it may be tougher for plaintiffs to obtain class certification in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) matters where individual issues regarding consent predominate. The...
View ArticleDoing Business in Canada: Investment Incentives
INVESTMENT INCENTIVES - Generally, Canadian companies are expected to be self-supporting, but for companies involved in export development, there are several types of investment incentive programs...
View ArticleSupreme Court to Protect Information on Cell Phones
The digital age has created a world in which over-sharing is the norm and electronic devices are capable of storing significant amounts of one’s personal information. However, in an important step to...
View ArticleStorming the CASL - Your email to Canada may now be against the law
Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) took effect July 1, 2014. CASL prohibits sending commercial electronic messages (CEMs) such as email, to parties in Canada without consent. If you don’t have...
View ArticleWeek in Review
Some high profile companies, including two technology giants, made headlines this week after former employees filed lawsuits against them alleging discrimination and harassment. The case against Yahoo...
View ArticleRecent Practical Effects of “Just Saying No”
In the past few months, we have seen an increasing number of hostile or unsolicited M&A bids where boards of directors of target companies have resisted bidders’ advances. Traditionally, the...
View ArticleEmpathy, relationships and press releases
The insights contained in Greentarget’s Disrupting the Press Release have validity because they are drawn not from the folks who write press releases but from the journalists who tell us they read...
View ArticleReviews Posted Under a Pseudonym Could be Defamatory
As written on this blog before, plaintiffs often have difficulty when alleging claims of defamation against anonymous defendants. Unsurprisingly, websites that provide a forum for anonymous commentary...
View ArticleThe Patentability Exclusion for "Abstract Ideas" is Even More Abstract...
In Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 2014 U.S. Lexis 4303 (June 19, 2014, No. 13-298) the Supreme Court once again addressed what has been termed "business method" patents in the context...
View ArticleMedicaid Claims And Health Care Fraud: As The Data Flows, New Cracks Emerge
As we noted in two of our prior posts in the Insider blog, the government has long touted its ability to rely upon data mining as a means of detecting fraud in the federal health care system, and has...
View ArticleStatus Updates - July 2014 #7
..Since launching its Google+ social network three years ago, Google has insisted that Google+ users use only their real names on the network — no pseudonyms. Perhaps in an effort to attract more users...
View ArticleEven in Privacy Cases, Risk of Injury Does not Always Equal Injury
It’s an ancient conundrum; if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Privacy litigation may well offer the closest jurisprudential equivalent; if data is...
View ArticleFDA Hosts Webinar Addressing Social Media Draft Guidance
The Food and Drug Administration hosted a Social Media Draft Guidance Webinar. The July 10 webinar included summary review of the three draft guidances issued this year to date followed by a brief...
View ArticleFederal Circuit Orders Stay Pending Completion of CBM Review
Applying section 18(a)(1) of the America Invents Act (AIA) to an issue of first impression, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a district court, ordering a...
View ArticleSoftware Glitch Sparks FCA Suit Against Hospitals for Late Repayment of...
On June 27, the New York Attorney General’s Office and the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York intervened in a qui tam suit against Continuum Health Partners, Inc., Beth...
View ArticleMonthly Update for July 2014
Limited Space Still Available For Sustainable Futures Training Workshop: There are still spaces available for the Sustainable Futures Training workshop scheduled for August 5-7, 2014, at the George...
View ArticleCracking Under Pressure: “Raw” Juice Class Action down the Drain after...
On July 2, 2014 Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed a class action alleging that Hain Celestial Group, a manufacturer of “raw” juices, misleadingly labelled and advertised its wares. This dismissal is...
View ArticleCapital Thinking: Cybersecurity
Legislative Branch Activity - Cybersecurity Legislation - Last week, the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a closed session to mark up the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act...
View ArticleUniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (UFADAA)
On July 16, 2014, the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (UFADAA) was passed by the Uniform Law Commission. My colleague Gene Hennig and I originally proposed this uniform law in May of...
View ArticleCalifornia Removes Statutory Restrictions On Virtual Currency
On June 28, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 129, which repeals a state ban on the issuance or circulation of anything but lawful money of the United States. As described in a legislative...
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