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2010-04-27 | | | | | | | | Put Out ... the FIRE: Axed Employee Goes On a Smear Campaign -- How to Fight Back
As any manager knows, letting employees go is never easy. The process becomes much more difficult when an angry former employee seeks to damage the company's reputation by launching a public campaign of disparaging remarks online and in the media. Left unchallenged, such a campaign can tarnish the company's image among potential investors, customers, and its own employees.
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| | | | | | | | Dueling Documents Set Stage for Goldman Sachs Showdown
Both the government and Goldman Sachs & Co. released a flurry of documents over the weekend as both sides prepared for a showdown in a Senate hearing today. The hearing is looking into whether the giant Wall Street bank profited during the financial meltdown by selling subprime mortgage investments that were secretly designed to fail.
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2010-04-26
2010-04-23
2010-04-22
2010-04-21
2010-04-20 | | | | | | | | They're Getting Paid HOW Much?
In the wake of the economic meltdown and the unprecedented infusion of public funds to prop up troubled companies, executive compensation has come under intense scrutiny, particularly in the financial services industry.
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2010-04-19 | | | | | | | | Patent Litigation Weekly: MobileMedia's Unusual Patent Infringement Campaign
MobileMedia Ideas LLC didn't create a big stir when it launched in January. Instead, the holding company simply issued a press release in which it let the world know that it would "make available" its innovations, (which is, of course, generally considered to be patent-speak for, "We will be suing people shortly").
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2010-04-12
2010-04-09
2010-04-08 | | | | | | | | This New Top Lawyer's Just Gone Nuts
He was nuts about software, but now he's nuts about, well ... nuts. Stephen Kim started his career in corporate law as general counsel of Oblix, Inc., an identity management software company. When Oblix was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2005, Kim headed to Diamond Foods, Inc., a nut processor and marketer, where he was recently promoted to senior vice president and general counsel. Kim continues to oversee human resources at the company.
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2010-04-07
2010-04-06 | | | | | | | | Watch Out: Cablevision Channel Surfs for New Biz Affairs Top Gun
One of the country's largest cable providers is fighting, like everybody, to put the economic downturn behind them — and it's hired a new lead attorney to handle its joint ventures and strategic investments. Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision Systems Corporation has named Todd Brecher as its new associate general counsel for business affairs.
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2010-04-05 | | | | | | | | The $233.3B Man: GC Bubbles Up to the Top at World's Largest Oil Company
Talk about company loyalty. In 1973, straight out of law school from the University of Texas at Austin, David Kultgen joined oil behemoth Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco). After 37 years of refining his in-house expertise within the company, Kultgen has ascended to its top legal job.
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| | | | | | | | Patent Litigation Weekly: With Trial Win, DataTreasury Licensing Campaign Gets Boost
On March 26, an East Texas jury ordered U.S. Bancorp to pay $27 million for infringing check-imaging patents held by DataTreasury. That sum—which could be tripled since the infringement was found to have been willfull—will be added to the more than $350 million that DataTreasury has already collected from some 30 other banks and check-processing companies that have agreed to license the small company's patents.
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2010-04-01 | | | | | | | | Forum Shopper's Remorse
Chevron thought that Ecuadoran justice sounded great until it got a taste. Now it faces a $27 billion judgment. The only way out: more forum shopping.
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2010-03-31 | | | | | | | | Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick) Wake Up!
The Jan. 15, 2010, opinion of Judge Shira Scheindlin in Pension Committee of the University of Montreal Pension Plan et al., v. Banc of America Securities, LLC (Pension Committee) is potentially the most significant e-discovery decision affecting counsel and litigants in six years.
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2010-03-30 | | | | | | | | OK Computer! Corporate Legal Department Nets Rare ABA Honor
For only the second time in its 15-year history, the American Bar Association's national public service award will go to a corporate legal department. And the winner is: International Business Machines Corporation, for its law department's dedication to providing free legal assistance to nonprofit groups that serve the poor and disadvantaged.
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2010-03-29 | | | | | | | | Patent Litigation Weekly: FedEx Sends Scott Harris Patent Packing
This week, a Scott Harris patent bites the bar-code dust, for now. And a close look at how it made its way from application to the courtroom shows how a lawyer-inventor was able to claim that FedEx infringed his intellectual property with every package it shipped.
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| | | | | | | | You Can Invent, Can You Talk the Talk?
Whether one is assessing the value of a patent, contemplating the filing of a patent infringement action or plotting trial strategy in a patent case, a critical consideration, which may well dictate the outcome, is the strength of the inventor as a witness.
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2010-03-26
2010-03-25
2010-03-24 | | | | | | | | Must-Know Facts About Health Reform
A beaming President Obama on Tuesday signed a $938 billion health care overhaul that included the Senate's reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and a package of changes to the bill through a separate reconciliation bill.
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| | | | | | | | Nothin' But Blue Sky: United Airlines' New Top Lawyer Is Flying High
Thomas Sabatino Jr. is flying high after walking away with a lucrative severance package from his former employer. He's been named the new general counsel for UAL Corporation, the holding company of United Airlines. He'll start his new job on March 29, and report to CEO Glenn Tilton.
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2010-03-22
2010-03-19 | | | | | | | | Hunted by the Pac! This New GC Knows How to Play Ball -- Legally
He knows how to play ball -- legally. The Pacific-10 Conference has lured its new legal chief away from the Kansas City Chiefs. The college sports conference has hired Woodie H. Dixon Jr. as its new general counsel and vice president of business affairs. He'll start his new job on April 15.
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2010-03-18 | | | | | | | | Jury Finds Plaintiffs Lawyers Defrauded Railroad in Asbestos Suit
When a federal jury returned a verdict against two Mississippi plaintiffs lawyers on March 8, finding that they had committed fraud against Illinois Central Railroad, it was the culmination of the railroad's seven-year battle to fight back against abusive asbestos claims. It also may have been the first civil trial in which attorneys were nailed for fraud in bringing these claims.
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| | | | | | | | They Weren't Going to Be Railroaded: Plaintiffs' Lawyers Put Down
When a federal jury returned a verdict against two Mississippi plaintiffs' lawyers on March 8, finding that they had committed fraud against Illinois Central Railroad, it was the culmination of the railroad's seven-year battle to fight back against abusive asbestos claims. It also may have been the first civil trial in which attorneys were nailed for fraud in bringing these claims.
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2010-03-17 | | | | | | | | Look Out! They're Gonna Get YOU
The heightened focus by the Department of Justice on possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) has received much attention from corporate counsel over the last few years -- particularly those in-house counsel whose business unit clients conduct business abroad.
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2010-03-16 | | | | | | | | Behold ... JPMorgan's Two-Headed (Legal) Monster
Two heads are better than one in JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s legal department. The New York–based financial services firm now has not one, but two co-heads of litigation: Jill Centella and Michael Coyne. Both report directly to general counsel Stephen Cutler and replace Mark Segall, who left after 20 years with the company.
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2010-03-15 | | | | | | | | General Counsel Discuss Their Changing Roles
The role of general counsel is evolving fast, thanks in large part to the changing economy and increasing regulation, in-house lawyers agree. Top lawyers aren't just legal advisers anymore: They're now business partners, strategists and even risk managers, to some degree.
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2010-03-12 | | | | | | | | The Evolving Landscape of Data Privacy
Although other legal and regulatory issues, ranging from financial reform to executive compensation, have firmly grabbed the spotlight, the stealth issue for 2010 may well be data security and privacy.
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2010-03-10 | | | | | | | | Smokin' With Reefer Madness
As if you weren't already busy enough, corporate counsel dealing with labor and employment have yet another new issue they will increasingly be called upon to address: the use of medical marijuana in the workplace.
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2010-03-09 | | | | | | | | High Stakes, Huge Money: the top ten results from last year's IP litigation docket.
As with any practice, victory in IP litigation can be defined a number of ways. Perhaps it comes in the form of a multimillion-dollar jury verdict. Or as a judge's ruling affirming the validity of the patent on a blockbuster drug. Or as an injunction that keeps a potentially infringing piece of software off the market. Whatever shape it takes, it's no doubt sweet for those on the winning side—as those involved in these high-profile matters from 2009 can surely attest.
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2010-03-05 | | | | | | | | Keep Your Change: An interview with Qwest Communications GC Richard Baer
Richard Baer, general counsel of Qwest Communications International, Inc., didn't get the memo. Practically everyone in the in-house bar seems to think that alternative fee arrangements are the future of the legal marketplace. Baer, however, doesn't. At a December conference in New York, he said that trashing the billable hour hadn't worked out for Qwest. In fact, he said, "alternative fee arrangements have been a colossal train wreck for us."
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2010-03-04 | | | | | | | | Uh-oh Veoh: Big Copyright Win Can't Save Online Video-Sharing Company
In the March issue of Corporate Counsel, we reported on a remarkable copyright win by online video startup Veoh against Universal Music Group. UMG, which has over time been able to either shut down or extract substantial settlements from a slew of Internet-related companies large and small, claimed Veoh owed it damages because the smaller company was hosting user-generated videos that featured copyrighted UMG music.
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| | | | | | | | Lessons of the Patent Troll Tracker
Two years after Richard Frenkel—AT the time an in-house Cisco Systems, Inc., lawyer and now of counsel at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati—outed himself as the until-then-anonymous author of the controversial patent litigation blog, the Patent Troll Tracker saga appears to be over.
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2010-03-03 | | | | | | | | Exxon Mobil Stays In-House In Tapping New GC Balagia
The world’s largest integrated oil company didn’t have to drill deep to find its next top lawyer. Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corporation has promoted in-house litigator S. Jack Balagia, Jr., as its new general counsel. He replaced Charles Matthews, Jr., who had been general counsel since 1995, on March 1.
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2010-03-02
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