In April 2014, PLI published the following new Treatise editions:
If you are on standing order for these titles or have a Standing Order Plan with PLI, these have already been shipped to you. If you would like to place an order, please email PLI Library Relations or call 877-900-5291.
In April 2014, PLI updated the following Treatises:
If you are on standing order for any of these titles, the releases have already been shipped. If you would like to place an order, please email PLI Library Relations or call 877-900-5291.
Due to customer demand, PLI recently unveiled a new way to receive our acclaimed Answer Books–our Answer Book Standing Order Plan! Much like our Treatise Standing Order Plan, the Answer Book plan allows subscribers to receive review copies of all future Answer Books while receiving a discount of 35% off the retail price of those they decide to keep.
For more information on our Answer Book Standing Order plan, click here or contact PLI’s Library Relations team .
Happy Law Day! To celebrate, PLI is offering a discount of 35% off our Treatises and Answer Books. 
PLI’s Social Media and the Law received a very nice review from the Orange County Business Attorney Blog, which you can view here. The Treatise is available for purchase here and is also accessible online on our eBook library, PLI Discover PLUS. Interested in learning more about this book or PLI Discover PLUS? Contact PLI’s Library Relations team at PLI Library Relations or call 877-900-5291.
Social Media and the Law – Book Review
A few months ago, the Practicing Law Institute, a well-known publisher of legal practice guides, asked me to comment on its new book, Social Medial and the Law. I agreed to do so because I was curious as to what was in the book and wanted to find out whether this book could be an aid to my practice as a business litigation attorney and to my clients.
After a few weeks of reading the book, I find that it is a valuable resource for me as a business litigator.
My office is in Orange County, California, and I have served the business communities here for more than a decade. My clientele comprises small to medium sized businesses, with most them doing business internationally. Like most attorneys, I have been seeing a gigantic shift of focus to social media in business, as they have become an integral part of my clients’ business.
I often receive calls from clients inquiring about how to deal with untrue comments from disgruntled customers that have been posted on the Internet, how to create an office policy regarding social media (both the company’s and employees’), how to deal with trademark or other intellectual property infringements, and how to defend clients from a claim arising out of social media.
I find this book valuable because the author covers the topics thoroughly and with a focus on the importance of each area. Unlike other practice guides that try to impress the reader with the details of information, this book focuses on only the essentials, so that once I have enough information that deals with a client’s situation, I then can focus on the legal research that specifically addresses the issue of what the client is experiencing. The content of this book is balanced between simplicity and sufficiency. I don’t feel that I am buried under all the facts and details that may or may not apply to my client’s situation, and yet I feel that the information given is sufficient to help me discuss the matter intelligently with the client and focus my effort on subsequent legal research and preparation for the case.
Chapters 2 to 9 are the meat of the book, in my opinion; they deal with every conceivable issue that may come up in the context of social media, such as the following:
Although Kathryn L. Ossian is listed on the book cover and is identified as the editor, there are other contributing writers with equally impressive resumes in their areas of expertise.
As a business litigation and trial attorney, without being an expert in the field, I often need to have a grasp on sufficient expertise on the issues before me to formulate the litigation strategies and to tell the story to the judge or jury at the time of trial. This book helps me to accomplish just that in the area of social media.
Check out this nice mention of PLI’s treatise, Kane on TradeMark Law: A Practitioner’s Guide 6th Edition , on Wells IP Law here. You can purchase the book by clicking here. Kane on Trademark Law is also available on our eBook library platform PLI Discover PLUS. Interested in learning more about this book or PLI Discover PLUS? Contact PLI’s Library Relations team at PLI Library Relations or call 877-900-5291.
Kane on Trademarks – Book Review
By: Nicholas Wells | April 19, 2014
Siegrun D. Kane. 2013. Kane on Trademark Law: A Practitioner’s Guide (6th Edition). Practising Law Institute: New York. 1071 pages. $395 from publisher; $375.25 from Amazon.com
I work in several areas of law—copyright, social media, technology agreements, advertising and promotions—but at the moment, I spend the largest part of my day working on trademark matters. If you’re familiar with trademark law, you know that the leading work in the field, cited by hundreds of court decisions, is J. Thomas Mc Carthy’s treatise, McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition. Coming in at seven volumes—and growing, and with a front matter and Table of Contents that stretches 154 pages, McCarthy can be… unwieldy. The $ 4,500 price tag may also be a concern for many smaller firms or lawyers who don’t spend all day handling trademarks. Still, it is the resource everyone quotes.
So when PLI offered to send me a review copy of Kane on Trademark Law by Siegrun D. Kane, I was curious to see how it compared.
The short answer: For most lawyers and in-house counsel, Kane’s book is the better choice.
Don’t get me wrong. If you’re litigating trademark cases in federal court, you’ll probably like having McCarthy around. But most of us don’t do that. Kane on Trademark Law, now in its Sixth Edition, seems committed to remaining a one-volume work. That choice is emblematic of its usefulness. Everything you’re likely to need to know about trademarks is in your hand. Kane is subtitled A Practitioner’s Guide. Not a Judge’s Guide, or a Professor’s Guide, or even a Litigator’s Guide.
The Kane text is well organized, well footnoted, and well written, with headings that make it easy to find the topic you need. (It also has a 60-page index.) There are sections on false advertising, litigation, Internet infringements, licensing, and dilution, in addition to the sections you’d expect to find on clearing marks for registration, prosecution procedures, and proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.
Kane also comes with a CD-ROM that contains the entire text of the volume in searchable, linked PDF files, carefully formatted to match the printed book. I’ve found this to be tremendously useful.
As an example of the different approach of Kane and McCarthy, consider the key trademark issue of likelihood of confusion between trademarks. Kane has 35 pages on the topic, plus another 20 focused on counterfeiting. McCarthy devotes Volume 3 to the topic—800 or so pages—plus innumerable related sections that appear in other volumes (See, e.g., Chapter 31, Volume 6, Defenses to Infringement). Or consider the sections on Inter Partes TTAB proceedings. Kane has 54 pages of succinct text on topics that include procedures, grounds, defenses, burden of proof, and review routes for TTAB decisions. McCarthy devotes… well, you get the idea.
I love McCarthy, but I keep using Kane because most of the time, I don’t have the time to use McCarthy. And my clients don’t have the money. Kane reminds me of the points I need to know. It references the statutory sections and leading cases. It summarizes and recommends practice steps without as much scholarly background. Most days, it’s just the better tool for what I need.
I think that’s also true for those, like in-house counsel, who are dealing with trademarks, social media, advertising, employment, real estate leases, contract disputes… and that’s just before lunch. Kane on Trademarks will serve in-house counsel by providing guidance on most trademark issues that they are likely to face. They’ll hire litigators to take trademark cases to the Federal Circuit and they will use McCarthy.
Kane does miss some areas that I wish it included. There appears to be nothing about ex parte appeals at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Perhaps it’s not a critical topic for most readers, but I’d like to see more on it. There is a little about using the Madrid Protocol, but virtually nothing about international trademark protection. This is clearly a book about U.S. law, but given its apparent target audience, at least a brief section on how international trademarks operate with some strategy pointers and references would be appropriate. Finally, there isn’t much about the procedures for handling disputes. True, those procedures are based on the TTAB manual and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. But guidance in a book like this goes a long way to help those not familiar with the rules.
Despite a few minor weaknesses, Kane on Trademarks seems to spend a lot of time on the corner of my desk.
In honor of National Library Week, Practising Law Institute if offering librarians a discount to our Answer Books for today only (4/16/2014). The offer today is 65% off the entire 19 Volume Answer Book Series . Or a 40% discount off 1 Answer Book of your choice. This offer is $1,675 for the 19 Volume Answer Book Series, which is a retail value of $4,785.
The Library Relations team would also like to encourage you to access our online publications through a subscription to PLI Discover PLUS. A subscription to PLUS gives you access our Course Handbooks, Treatises and Answer Books. You can also search for PLI Forms to provide legal templates for your day-to-day tasks, and transcripts to many of our PLI programs and seminars.
From the Library Relations team at PLI, enjoy the recognition you and your library deserve!
Many thanks to Professor Timothy Coggins for his nice mention of PLI Discover PLUS in the December 2013 edition of Virginia Lawyer.
In “Discovering E-Discovery: A Resources Guide”, Coggins, the Associate Dean for Library and Information Services at Richmond, reviews a number of helpful resources on electronic discovery. In particular, he highlights Chapter 3, “The Courts Intervene with Model Rules to Curb the Costs of E-Discovery: Will It Work and Should Litigants Use these Model Rules in the Rule 26(f) Conference” from our Course Handbook, Electronic Discovery Guidance 2012: What Corporate and Outside Counsel Need to Know in addition to our acclaimed Treatise, Electronic Discovery Deskbook.
Coggins also mentions how easy it is to access these titles on our eBook library, PLI Discover PLUS.
Interested in learning more about these books or PLI Discover PLUS? Contact PLI’s Library Relations team at PLI Library Relations or call 877-900-5291.
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Derivatives Deskbook: Close-Out Netting, Risk Mitigation, Litigation is a comprehensive derivatives resource geared to all users of swap agreements and derivatives, from financial institutions to corporate end users.
This new second edition defines the key terminology; identifies the major players; discusses the full range of documentation; and highlights risk mitigation techniques and best practices that can significantly minimize risks. Derivatives Deskbook examines the termination events and events of default that can trigger the early termination of OTC derivative transactions; the important process of closing out these deals; and the complex process of calculating the early termination amounts due the parties under the transactions, as well as how these transactions can be terminated in ways that minimize the damage to the parties and to the global financial system.
Most importantly, Derivatives Deskbook provides a comprehensive resource to all key litigation cases involving derivative transactions around the key jurisdictions in the world. It is an essential resource for every lawyer or business person engaged in derivative transactions.
Check out this new edition on our eBook library, PLI Discover PLUS, today!
Listed below are the PLI Course Handbooks published in March 2014:
Commercial Law and Practice
Corporate Law and Practice
Intellectual Property Law
Litigation and Administrative Practice
New York Practice Skills
Real Estate Law and Practice
Tax Law and Estate Planning
If you have any questions or would like to order a title, please email the PLI Library Relations Department or call 877-900-5291.