Blackletter

A suspension was sought for a lawyer who lobbed insults at another lawyer during a deposition. It's funny because the lawyer in the deposition itself defended the insults that he lobbed in the civility of his legal practice by citing the President.  The conflict started, and this is according to an article in the ABA Journal from May 6, 2020, when an attorney named Cone instructed his client not to answer a question. And the attorney on the other side, a man named Hillison responded to his client that the question had to be certified, which is a process in a deposition where the question can be asked to a judge or a magistrate judge or whoever's handling the case in the courts question can be certified to that judge and the judge can decide whether or not the witness has to answer the question in a deposition. So when Hillison said, "Hey, certify this question, then if you're going to ask it." Cohn replied, "Okay, then certify your own stupidity at this point." Hillison replied, "Counsel, I'm not going to sit here and take insults from you." Cohn replied, "At this point in time, a man who insults on a daily basis, everybody he does business with, has now been elected President of the United States. The standards have changed and I'll say what I want." In another exchange, Hillison began to ask about attorney's fees and Cohn said, "Don't waste your breath," and told his client not to answer. And when Hillison asked again, the attorney Cohn said, "Motion for sanctions. Indicate on the record I'm going to get sanctions against your firm like you wouldn't believe," and then the B word.

Tom Dunlap speaks remotely with Jenn Loges, of One Degree Capital, and Cherylyn Harley LeBon, of Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig, about the newly released SBA guidelines on loan forgiveness.

Today we're going to talk about the power grid. A new executive order from President Donald Trump is going to prohibit United States companies who work in the power grid from buying and putting in electrical equipment that has been made outside of the U.S.

Worried about the threat of foreign countries willfully manipulating our power grid with "potentially catastrophic effects", this would present significant risks to our economy, human health and safety and would render the United States less capable of acting in defense of itself and allies. This executive order gives the Secretary of Energy 150 days from now (September of this year) to issue specific rules and identify the countries that are "adversaries", the countries where you couldn't buy equipment from.  American companies in U.S. allied countries, companies in U.S. allied countries now will likely have the only opportunity to supply power grid companies with that kind of material and supplies.

Tom Dunlap Chats remotely with Bruce Coombes, CEO of QuickFee about his business, using payment solutions for professional services during the pandemic and advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Today we're going to talk about a Supreme Court argument. The first one ever heard by telephone in the entire history of the United States Supreme Court.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court heard arguments on May 4th, 2020, in the case of the United States Patent and Trademark Office versus Booking.com. Booking.com says that the term Booking.com should not be considered generic. The United States Patent and Trademark Office, relying on a case from 1888, called Goodyear's India Rubber Glove Manufacturing Company versus the Goodyear Rubber Company. In 1888, the Supreme Court found that adding the word company to a name did not make that name unique and the name company, something generic, plus the word company left the mark generic. Booking.com is arguing that the addition of the.com or.org or something like that to the word booking in this case makes the term registrable at the USPTO. The Supreme Court Justices asked questions in terms of seniority, starting with the Chief Justice, who then acted as a panel moderator for the rest of the justices.

Obviously after oral argument at the Supreme Court, the Court takes some time to consider the arguments of both sides and then issue a written opinion. There may be some telegraphing of that opinion based on the questions asked. The government was questioned about why the Supreme Court should rely on an 1888 Supreme Court opinion as opposed to the plain language of the Lanham Act statute on which this case is based. And Booking.com was asked why it needed to have Booking.com, why it was valuable as a trademark when just having the domain Booking.com itself seemed to be quite valuable and in fact many people would go online to Booking.com not knowing that it was the company itself, but just trying to book something. 

Today we're going to talk about employers and how they think about reopening as states start to reopen. Virginia's announced something called the Forward Virginia plan, which they'll start to loosen and reopen businesses in stages. California has something similar called the California's Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience. What these plans generally do is reopen businesses stage by stage. As instances of COVID-19 go down, fewer people are tested positive with it, there are fewer hospitalizations. As protective gear becomes more widely available, these states will ease up on their orders, and you can see those plans for those individual states online.

Other states like Georgia have taken their own road to this. Georgia's opening rather rapidly. On April 27th, they're going to take the next step, which expanded that to in-store retail services, and dine-in restaurants, and movie theaters. Believe it or not, and it's already past that date now, retail store services, dine-in and movie theaters and shopping malls in Georgia are opening, and there's a lot of controversy there.

There's some interstate packs that have come together. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island have formed a multi-state council that's going to work together to reopen their states in a coordinated way. They're obviously geographically proximate.  Then, California, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada and Washington announced something similar called the Western States Pact, where they'll collaborate in their shared regional economies to reopen. The same is true in the Midwest where Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, and Kentucky are going to work together to reopen their states.

Some things to remember, even after everything's reopened, retail stores are open, movie theaters are open, your bar or brewery that you own is opened, remember to disinfect things frequently. There could be a second wave of COVID-19. Set up social distancing tape or something like that, so that people know where that six foot distance is. To the extent that you can, encourage people to stay apart from each other, encourage people to use curbside delivery and pickup, and try to limit in-person visits to your business for appointments only. Limit walk-in traffic and things like that. Also, another thing that I think a lot of businesses already do, but if you don't do it and you're a small business, think about getting cashless transactions in place. Something like Apple Pay or Google Wallet or something like that. Ways where you don't have to exchange money by hand or touch credit cards or things like that. Cashless is good, touchless is better.

What is a notorious market? It's a term that's used to describe websites and physical marketplaces, both where there's large scale intellectual property infringement, particularly in the copyright and trademark space. Every year the United States trade representative, at least for a few years now, issues it's Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy. These are markets that the office has listed that it says harm U.S. businesses by counterfeiting goods either online or physically. Not surprisingly, a number of Chinese markets made the list including Taobao, owned by Alibaba, and DH Gate. But what was surprising was that Amazon made the list, at least Amazon's platforms in Canada, France, Germany, India, and the UK. The U.S. trade representative's report said that Amazon, at least in those country platforms, was not flagging bad vendors or setting sufficient procedures to keep counterfeiters and piraters off of these storefronts.

On today's episode Tom Dunlap has a virtual chat with John Whitbeck of WhitbeckBennett about an array of family issues and solutions during this trying time.