Posts Tagged: "Law360"

Employment Agreements: Employers Need To Pay Attention to Growing Government Activism

In the past, employers typically only needed to be concerned that confidentiality and non-compete clauses in their employment agreements may be challenged either by departing employees who want to work for a competitor or by a competing company attempting to hire an employee or former employee. That tide is changing as an increasing level of government scrutiny has been directed at these employee restrictive covenants. Recently, federal and state agencies have been challenging the enforceability of confidentiality provisions and non-competes that the agencies claim are not supported by legitimate business interests. Given this change-in-tide and the New Year, now is the perfect time for employers to engage counsel to review their confidentiality and non-compete provisions.

The Increasingly Important Roles of Bloggers in Post Grant Proceedings

Both petitioners’ and patent owners’ reliance on blog articles in the course of post grant proceedings has been approximately equal. However, the manner in which the blog articles were used did vary widely based on the litigator’s position during the proceeding. For petitioners, blog articles were most often cited to construe the claims (Apotex Inc. v. Amgen Inc., IPR2016-01542, Paper 2, p.69), were introduced as previous publications of an expert witness in order to help prove their qualifications (Samsung Electronics Co., v. Papst Licensing, IPR2016-01733, Ex. 1014, p. 99), or were used to bolster the credentials of one or more of the representing attorneys (Google, Inc. et al v. Smartflash, CBM2015-00132, Paper 17, p. 2). For patent owners, blog articles were most often referenced to provide support to summarize and clarify certain legal standards such as claim construction standards (Uniloc USA, Inc. et al v. Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., IPR2015-01615, Paper 12, p. 8), to clarify legislative history and identify Congressional intent (Coalition for Affordable Drugs VII v. Pozen, IPR2015-01241, Paper 13, p. 47), and to rebut the petitioner’s expert testimony by attacking the expert’s credibility (Coalition for Affordable Drugs VII v. Pharmacyclics, IPR2015-01076, Paper 20, p. 13).