Feature Articles

Parts of Patriot Act ruled unconstitutional
A US federal law, the USA Patriot Act, allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to compel communications companies, such as telephone and Internet providers, to turn over customer records to the FBI. The FBI issues a so-called “national security letter” to the company from which such records are sought. [...]

Remedial measures to combat spam cost firm.
As all e-mail users know, spam, or unsolicited e-mail impacts businesses worldwide, and spammers are always devising newer and more sophisticated techniques to evade firewalls and spam filters.
In May 2006, one US law firm being bombarded with spam decided to combat the problem, and the firm’s IT administrator adjusted [...]

One lawyer thinks so, and he’s taken a number of New York City nightclubs to court.
Nightclubs often use lower fees and shorter lines to attract women, but a recent lawsuit claims that the practice is against the law . The class action, Hollander v. Copacabana Nightclub, 1:2007 CV 5873, against Manhattan nightclubs alleges that the [...]

A perfect storm of increasingly valuable intellectual property portfolios and societal acceptance of suits based on the infringement of intellectual property has led to a surge in intellectual property verdicts.
Verdicts in US intellectual property cases are growing and last year they exceeded $1.3 billion. One example is the $78.9 million jury verdict high-tech company Finisar [...]

Hedge funds and other activist investors wishing to acquire seats on corporate boards of directors and to drive performance are behind an increase in corporate legal work.
Activist investors, particularly hedge funds, are driving an increase in legal work which is the natural result when sophisticated investors make demands and initiate proxy contests to acquire [...]

The role of corporate counsel is changing in the US from that of corporate confidante to cooperate gatekeeper.
In-house counsel play a significant role in corporate governance and in managing corporate crises. From legislation in response to corporate accounting scandals, to the threat of government investigations and class action litigation, today’s in-house counsel faces [...]

US authorities announce the indictment of 13 people, including two layers, on insider trading charges.
A New York U.S. Attorney’s Office recently announced the indictment of 13 people on insider trading charges. The indictments allege that the defendants participated in two insider trading rings.
The tipper in the larger of the two insider trading schemes was [...]

The widespread use of information technology has resulted in ever more electronic evidence. Now the US federal procedural rules have caught up.
To keep pace with the challenges posed by the discovery of electronic evidence, members of the bench and bar in the US have labored for several years to amend the Federal Rules of Civil [...]

American lawyer Gregory M. Poehler examines the intellectual property ramifications of linking.
Providing a link to another’s website is an extremely common practice among website owners. The practice of linking is so widespread that few companies even consider requesting permission from the owner of a site to which a link is provided. After all, there is [...]

Digital rights management solutions helps protect against copyright infringement, but has it gone too far?
About 75% of internet traffic is generated by peer-to-peer, so-called P2P, networks, much of which consists of unlicensed copyrighted material. In response, content providers have developed a number of “technological protection measures” (“TPMs”) aimed at restricting users’ ability to copy digital [...]