2018 Federal Circuit Yearbook: Patent Law Developments in the Federal Circuit

Each year, the Federal Circuit Yearbook provides a concise, comprehensive review of every patent decision published by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit during the preceding year. With the Yearbook, readers may conveniently follow all recent patent law developments in the Federal Circuit, presented in a manner that reduces specialized patent and technical jargon to a minimum.

Cases summarized in the Yearbook include the following, among many others:

Utility and Inventions Patentable: Where claims “are substantially similar and linked to the same” law of nature, analyzing representative claims is proper. Section 101 issues may be resolved at the pleading stage before formal claim construction: “we have repeatedly affirmed § 101 rejections at the motion to dismiss stage, before claim construction or significant discovery has commenced.” See Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland Heartlab, Inc. v. True Health Diagnostics LLC, discussed in § 1:1.

Novelty and Statutory Bars: Federal Circuit concludes that inventor declaration without corroborating evidence alone is not always sufficient to overcome section 102(e) prior art. Despite prior case law (particularly in the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals), Federal Circuit seems to move law under section 102(e), directed to showing prior disclosure subject matter was not “by another,” closer to case law under section 102(g), directed to showing prior inventorship. See EmeraChem Holdings, LLC v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., discussed in § 2:4.

Nonobviousness: Circuit Judge Newman, in dissent, urged that it is time to “remedy” the Graham analysis—namely that the objective factors should be considered together with the first three Graham factors rather than first determining whether a prima facie case of obviousness had been shown. See Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Hospira, Inc., discussed in § 3:7.

Claim Construction: Using functional language in an apparatus claim does not necessarily mean that the claim improperly covers both an apparatus and method. Functional language described capabilities of a system rather than user actions. See MasterMine Software, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., discussed in § 6:5.

The 2018 Federal Circuit Yearbook is available on PLI PLUS, our online research database. If you’d like to purchase a print copy, please email libraryrelations@pli.edu or call 877.900.5291.

Treatise Update! Investment Adviser Regulation

Investment Adviser Regulation: A Step-by-Step Guide to Compliance and the Law (Third Edition) guides practitioners through the maze of statutory, SEC, and state standards impacting investment advisers, as well as provides advice on the practical aspects of building a practice. This book clarifies key status issues that determine registration and disclosure duties as well as liability exposure.

The most recent update to this treatise expands its coverage of the rules and regulations affecting investment advisers. Highlights of this release include:

This treatise is available on PLI PLUS, our online research database. If you’d like to purchase a print copy, please email libraryrelations@pli.edu or call 877.900.5291.

 

New Journal! PLI Current: White Collar Practice Journal

We are pleased to announce the newest journal from PLI Press, PLI Current: White Collar Practice Journal. This journal is the first in a series of new journals from PLI Press dedicated to coverage of key practice areas. It will be published at least twice each year and features original articles written by the leading experts in this field—practicing attorneys, judges, scholars, and others, including PLI Press’s highly acclaimed authors and CLE faculty members—dedicated to bringing you expert commentary and analysis of developments in financial crimes and related issues.

Articles in this premier issue include:

This journal is available on PLI PLUS, our online research database. If you’d like to purchase a print copy, please email libraryrelations@pli.edu or call 877.900.5291.

 

New Edition! Insider Trading Law and Compliance Answer Book (2019 Edition)

Insider Trading Law and Compliance Answer Book is an easy-to-use guide to the reach of the insider trading laws, the specifics that must be proved in court, the available defenses, the penalties, the current approaches taken by the SEC and the Department of Justice to insider trading violations, and the best compliance policies and procedures for firms to enact to minimize the chances of a violation.

More than two dozen experts at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP share their knowledge in clear and succinct question-and-answer format. Updated with the latest key court decisions, the book provides timely and practical information for investors, corporate insiders, professional traders, investment advisers, broker-dealers, and other participants in the securities industry, as well as insights and analysis for the lawyers who advise and represent them.

Some highlights of the 2019 Edition:

  • New chapter: Insider Trading Law and Commodity Interests. Recent rulemaking and high-profile CFTC enforcement actions have made it clear that market participants and their counsel must be familiar with insider trading law as it applies to the commodity futures and derivatives markets. This new chapter explains the prohibitions on insider trading in the commodity futures market, compares the statutory provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act and the Securities Exchange Act, compares CFTC Rule 180.1 and the SEC Rule 10b-5, and discusses two recent “plant-the-flag” enforcement actions.
  • Are cryptocurrencies securities? In answering that question, the SEC signaled it will apply the “investment contract” test from Howey. Under that test, cryptocurrencies themselves might not be securities, but ICOs or other products sold to investors using cryptocurrencies as the underlying asset would be.
  • Nonpublic information and the Internet. See chapter 7 for new discussion of whether an issuer’s website can be a “recognized channel of distribution” for disclosures and whether information disclosed via social media is considered public.

This answer book is available on PLI PLUS, our research database. If you’d like to order a print copy, please email libraryrelations@pli.edu or call 877.900.5291.

New Edition! Corporate Political Activities Deskbook (2018 Edition)

Corporate Political Activities Deskbook provides a thorough grounding in the current state of the law on federal and state campaign finance, pay-to-play, lobbying, gift compliance, and more. It serves as a practical manual for in-house attorneys and others who advise corporations about involvement in the political process, suggesting ways that corporations can utilize the available avenues of interacting with the government while avoiding negative press and legal and regulatory attention.

Among the developments discussed in the new 2018 edition are:

  • Trump ethics pledge: Non-career political appointees to the executive branch of the Trump administration must sign an ethics pledge. The “Trump Pledge” replaces a similar ethics pledge that President Obama required for appointees, but with some key differences: The pledge covers prohibition on the acceptance of gifts from registered lobbyists and restricts appointees from working on matters involving a former client or employer for which the appointee worked, or on which the appointee lobbied, in the previous two years. The pledge also imposes certain restrictions on lobbying activity on appointees upon leaving government service.

 

  • Ban on contributions by federal contractors:  In Wagner v. FEC, a federal contractor was fined a $34,000 civil penalty for a $200,000 contribution to a “super PAC,” which the Federal Election Commission (FEC) found to have violated the ban on federal contractor contributions under Federal Election Campaign Act. The penalty is significant because while the FEC previously suggested that the federal contractor ban applied to super PAC contributions, it had not previously found actual violations to have occurred, leaving open some question regarding the FEC’s appetite for imposing penalties for such contributions.

 

This essential and timely treatise is available on PLI PLUS, our research database. If you’d like to order a print copy, please email libraryrelations@pli.edu or call 877.900.5291.

 

New Title! Depositions Answer Book

Depositions are the key component of all litigation matters that survive a motion to dismiss, allowing parties to discover the legal and factual theories of their opponent and to explore the validity of their own case theories and themes. What litigants learn from depositions can guide critical strategic decisions such as whether to settle (and, if so, at what value) or proceed to trial.

The newest answer book title from PLI Press, Depositions Answer Book draws on author Thomas Jackson’s decades of experience in antitrust, business, securities, IP and other litigation to help you master the crucial deposition process, delivering practice-based guidance on:

This essential new title is available on PLI PLUS, our online research database. If you’d like to order a print copy, please email libraryrelations@pli.edu or call 877.900.5291.

 

Library Ledger, March 2018, Volume 6, Issue 2

The latest edition of the Library Ledger is now available!

In this edition, we highlight the latest feature on PLI PLUS–Case Law Links! We also showcase PLI PLUS enhancements throughout the years as well as new content added in 2018. Lauren Allshouse, our Library Relations Manager, discusses this year’s AALL conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

Looking for an older edition? The complete archive of the Library Ledger is available here.

 

Commercial Ground Leases: Now in its 30th Year!

Since the publication of its first edition in 1988, Commercial Ground Leases has been helping real estate professionals draft, negotiate, and finalize equitable, error-free commercial ground lease documents that address the needs of both landlord and tenant, providing clear explanations of complex issues in a framework that makes each individual subject easy to find. This one-stop volume also includes several valuable appendices that offer time-saving sample agreement language.

Commercial Ground Leases covers all the critical areas that participants in a commercial real estate development project need to know about in order to resolve any ground lease issues that may arise.

Recent updates to the third edition include:

–Chapter 4, Tenant Financing: General Updated section 4:5.3 reviews the risks posed by leasehold mortgages to the landowner.

–Chapter 6, Leasehold Financing A new section, 6:7.1[G], reviews the inclusion in the ground lease and in leasehold mortgage documents of a waiver by the ground lease tenant/borrower of any rights to a claim for damages against either the landowner or any leasehold mortgagee arising from any new lease into which they may enter.

–Chapter 7, Bankruptcy Updated section 7:3.2[C] reviews stub rent and whether the past due rent for the entire month is treated as unpaid pre-petition rent or if the portion of the rent attributable to the period after the filing date to the next rent due date is includible as a priority administrative expense.

This title is available on PLI PLUS, our research database.  If you’d like to order a print copy, please email libraryrelations@pli.edu or call 877.900.5291.

 

New Title! Arbitrating Commercial Disputes in the United States

PLI recently published a new title, Arbitrating Commercial Disputes in the United States.

Bringing or defending commercial arbitrations requires a clear grasp of the latest developments in the field, a practical understanding of how the arbitration process works, and knowledge of how the courts interpret and enforce arbitration agreements and treat arbitral awards. And participating in an arbitration demands a distinctive set of skills, different from those learned in the courtroom.

In Arbitrating Commercial Disputes in the United States, author/editor David Singer and his contributors—many of them arbitrators, and all of them deeply familiar with the arbitration process—provide the information and insights that will help readers master commercial arbitration.

Citing hundreds of cases, as well as drawing upon the extensive experience of the contributors, this book addresses the strategies that lead to success.

This essential new treatise is available on PLI PLUS, our research database.  If you’d like to order a print copy, please email libraryrelations@pli.edu or call 877.900.5291.