News, Events, & Insights

This blog post was prepared by Inna S. Wood and Michael Moradzadeh.

The Private Company Flexibility and Growth Act (H.R. 2167), referred to as the “Facebook Rule” by many internet bloggers, was introduced in the House by Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) on June 14, 2011. Its main theme is to increase the shareholders of record threshold requiring the mandatory registration of a private company with the SEC from 500 to 1,000 shareholders. The act modifies the original shareholder limit that was established by Section 12 (g) of the Securities Exchange Act in 1964 and has not been revised since. It also exempts accredited investors and employees from that count.

After several sporadic decisions issued by the Supreme Court impacting the US patent system and years of debate about how the system should be improved, Congress recently passed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (HR 1249).  President Obama signed the Act into law on September 16, 2011.  The text of the Act can be found here.

The provisions of the new law have a variety of effective dates.  Some of the changes take effect immediately.  Fee increases will be instituted on September 26, 2011.  Other changes will not be implemented until 2012 and 2013.

The ongoing  “patent war” between Google, Apple and Microsoft has brought public attention to the value that these companies perceive in their patent holdings. These companies are aggressively buying patents, hoping to integrate those discoveries with their own, but also to preclude their use by competitors through the threat of patent-infringement litigation. Software patents, are playing a pivotal role in this competition, for example, patent-infringement actions against smartphone producers utilizing Google’s Android operating system.

In my first two blogs on the subject of cloud computing for lawyers, we learned the basics of cloud computing and how it’s being used by lawyers. We also briefly explored the principal ethical implications for lawyers who use such virtual law technologies in their practice. Lawyers practicing in alternative law firm models are increasingly relying on such technologies as a way to stay connected to their fellow lawyers and to their clients, and also as a way to to keep down operating costs.

Yesterday, The Made in the USA Foundation (Foundation) filed two petitions with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  The petitions requested that the FTC issue complaints, one against Chrysler (here) and the other against Ford (here), both for falsely advertising that certain automobiles they manufacture are made in the U.S. when they in fact are not.

CA Water District’s new domain names unfairly drown out Central Basin Municipal Water District.

On October 5, 2011 Steve Jobs died and the world lost a great man.

In honor, one of my tech friends, Eric Greenspan of Make It Work, posted the above image to his Facebook page yesterday afternoon, which I immediately “Liked.”  (Eric also took part in a moving HuffPost Tribute to Steve Jobs, which can be seen here).  Let me correct myself; I immediately loved this image.  It’s so simple and powerful.  It’s the perfectly beautiful human side of Apple.  It made me teary-eyed.

Apple is known for innovation.  Above on the left is Apple’s revolutionary touch-screen device.  Above on the right is a portion of the patent for this device.  Apple’s introduced the iPhone on January 9, 2007 (has it only been five years?).  On the very same day, it filed a federal trademark registration application for MULTI-TOUCH.  Since I know you’re dying to know, the IPHONE trademark registration application was filed on September 26, 2006, although not by Apple.  It was filed by a company named Ocean Telecom Services, which applied based on its foreign registration of the IPHONE mark in Trinidad and Tobago.  Ocean Telecom merged with Apple on October 5, 2007, and Apple took over ten pending IPHONE trademark registration applications from Ocean Telecom.

On June 28, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown of California signed an amendment to the California tax code which would impose on large Internet retailers the obligation to collect sales tax (technically “use” tax – but for our purposes, it’s equivalent to sales tax) from California customers. Initially, Amazon took the battle to a new level by attempting to get a referendum on the California ballot to have the sales tax law reversed. In the end, for reasons that remain a bit mysterious, Amazon entered into an agreement with California on September 9, 2011 whereby California would postpone enforcement of the new sales tax law for one year in exchange for Amazon agreeing to drop its bid to bring a referendum to overturn the new law. Internet legal issues can change quickly, but this turnabout seems without precedent.

In my previous blog post, I provided a brief overview of cloud computing and how it is used by lawyers. I noted that its use is expanding beyond virtual law firms and alternative law firms to include Big Law, too, even including AmLaw 100 law firms. In this post, I will discuss some of the main ethical issues stemming from lawyers’ use of cloud computing and other virtual law technologies.

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