Posts on ‘November 10th, 2009’

An anti-same-sex marriage group has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to block the public release of the names and other personal information of 138,000 people who signed a petition that aimed to strip gay and lesbian couples of the domestic partnership rights enjoyed by married heterosexual couples in Washington state. Groups in favor of retaining the benefits have been demanding release of the names and addresses of those who signed the petition.

Law firms have been reluctant to upgrade their videoconferencing systems due to high costs and poor audio and video quality. Now telepresence conferencing, designed to replicate in-person meetings through state-of-the art technology, has law firms pulling up their chairs to the screen.

A former SEC enforcement lawyer pleaded guilty Monday to impersonating representatives of a hedge fund and a pension fund to assist disgraced ex-attorney Marc Dreier in selling a phony promissory note. Robert L. Miller’s surprise plea and agreement to cooperate with prosecutors raised the possibility there might be more arrests in the investigation of Dreier, the former sole equity partner of 250-lawyer Dreier LLP who is serving a 20-year sentence for peddling hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus notes to investors.

U.S. Supreme Court justices from across the spectrum voiced skepticism Monday about whether intangible business methods and other innovations untethered to machines deserved patent protection. The comments, some of which bordered on the derisive, came in the long-awaited argument in Bilski v. Kappos, touted by some as the most important patent case in decades. Several attorneys predicted after the argument that the Court will look for a narrow ground for decision in the case.