Posts on ‘December 10th, 2008’

With Cabinet-level appointments nearly complete, antitrust lawyers expect President-elect Obama to soon choose who will run the agencies responsible for merger laws. Despite the oft-repeated names of many obvious candidates, political insiders know dark horses often do very well in the wake of difficult campaigns. So, people handicapping the races for top antitrust jobs are wondering whether personal and family ties could lead to surprising names being put forth for antitrust enforcement.

Some popular conceptions about IP litigation are taking a hit, thanks to Stanford Law School’s Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse. Unveiled Monday evening, the searchable online database tracks all patent cases since 2000 and offers hard statistics on matters ranging from the number of suits filed to how plaintiffs fare in front of a particular judge. Mark Lemley, an IP law professor at Stanford who spearheaded the project, said the database revealed some surprising trends.

So far this year, equity partners at the nation’s top law firms are bringing in 4 percent less revenue than they did in 2007, according to a new survey. “That’s the first time we’ve seen that in a long time,” says Jeffrey Grossman, a managing director at Wachovia Corp.’s legal specialty group, which conducted the survey. The survey included 50 firms in The Am Law 100 and five in The Am Law 200 and focused on firms’ finances through the third quarter of 2008.

The $565 million merger struck between Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats Marketplace in mid-2007 is becoming one of those legal battles that’s so protracted it’s hard to keep up with. Now, the Whole Foods legal team is trying something it says hasn’t been attempted in half a century — suing the Federal Trade Commission. The suit filed Monday accuses the FTC of violating the federal Administrative Procedure Act. Leading antitrust experts are not optimistic about Whole Foods’ chances of winning that argument.

The economic downturn presents an opportune time for firms to re-examine their policies for managing client matter information — to cut costs and go green. When a client calls, asking “What environmental initiatives has your firm implemented?” your firm will have a solid response.

New partner announcements are starting to come in, and things aren’t looking so good. Among 13 Am Law 200 firms in California that have announced new partners, eight of the firmwide classes are smaller than last year. And not many think that the candidates are to blame. Consultant Peter Zeughauser notes, “It’s a tough year to be up for partner. Firms are going to pay for the sins of past years. Partner candidates this year are going to pay for the sins of prior years.”

When IP lawyer and entrepreneur John Amster launched RPX Corp. as the cure-all for patent trolls in September, the industry was skeptical about how it would work. The new business is catering to the frustration that big tech companies have with what they derogatorily label “patent trolls.” Amster says his company will charge members an annual fee and in return RPX will buy dangerous patents off the street and give their members a license. So far RPX has signed up two companies to its program: IBM and Cisco.

“Bump messages” — messages posted to Internet forums to move older message threads to a more prominent spot — do not constitute “republication” of an allegedly defamatory statement, New York Supreme Court Justice Herman Cahn has concluded. Ruling otherwise would have a “’serious inhibitory effect’ on this form of communication,” he found in denying a request by Admission Consultants for pre-action discovery aimed at obtaining information on two posters to ’s Web site

A senior Justice Department official said Tuesday that “99.8 percent” of the department’s work with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has gone smoothly. The 0.2 percent snag: The department has reservations about granting the team’s request to review classified legal opinions related to secret CIA and National Security Agency programs.