Blackletter

Everybody's concerned about it. Not only has it been declared a pandemic, but it's caused markets to crash and of course now, internet scammers are taking advantage of this. So something for businesses everywhere to be aware of, to warn their employees about right away, something to jump on is this huge instance of coronavirus-laced emails that include everything from keystroke loggers to malware that gets installed on a person's computer. As an example, some of these emails come from what appear to be the World Health Organization with either solutions for the coronavirus or important information and contain an attachment to click on. Other emails contain things that say something like, "Secret cure for the coronavirus," or fake internal emails from the organization's president on the coronavirus. In this current climate, every company is sending out emails almost daily or every other day about the risks of coronavirus and how to stay sanitary and how to avoid catching it and what to do if you want to be tested. This is what these emails are taking advantage of. One of the things that's happened recently, is a DDoSs attack, a denial of service attack on the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Fortunately, their website stayed up throughout the attack, but this happened on March 16th.

Be on the lookout for malware. Take all the precautions you normally would. Don't open an email if you don't literally know who it's from. Check the email address in the from line before you open an attachment or an email and make sure that it's got the right domain extension.

Today's special COVID-19 topic is about The Families First Coronavirus Response Act and how it becomes law. The Act provides two key benefits to employees: 1) Emergency Family and Medical Leave, and 2) Emergency Sick Leave. The Act also provides a refundable tax credit benefit to eligible employers.

For more information check out the blog here:https://www.dbllawyers.com/the-families-first-coronavirus-response-act-becomes-law/

https://www.dbllawyers.com/waco-is-a-great-place-for-patent-owners/

Today, a lesson on patent indefiniteness. A recent ruling from the Federal Circuit has confirmed the Patent Trial and Appeals Board cannot find a patent indefinite, that an IPR and inter-parties review proceeding is limited to the scope of the petition. That's a big deal. Indefiniteness, defined by the United States Supreme Court in a case called Nautilus vs. Biosig Instruments basically held that a patent is indefinite if the language of the claims in the patent fails to inform somebody who's an ordinary skilled artisan, that is a person of ordinary skill in the art, with reasonable certainty about the scope of the invention. In other words, if somebody who is skilled in the art, somebody who's an expert in the field of whatever the patent's in, can't be informed about how much the claims cover, what the scope of the invention is, then that patent claim would be indefinite. It's been confirmed by the Federal Circuit, and the big takeaways here are that probably they'll institute fewer petitions against patents in the future, and probably, big takeaway for practitioners here, is that you may want to think twice about asserting indefiniteness, or rather challenging a patent that you might think is indefinite because the PTAP can't do that, and if you challenge a patent you think is indefinite at the PTAP, and your case is still pending in district court, and you walk away with a loss at the Patent Trial and Appeals Board, that may weigh on you in the district court level. So you may want to save those challenges for the district court.

On this special episode of Blackletter, Tom Dunlap discusses managing business and employee obligations during the COVID 19 pandemic.  Topics include: legal obligations, workplace safety, establish an emergency succession plan, and additional measures.

Blackletter travels to Wilmington, Delaware where Tom Dunlap discusses selling and protecting solutions, patents and IP in China with John Panichella, President and CEO, and Royce Warrick, Sr VP and General Counsel of Solenis.  

https://www.dbllawyers.com/secure-act-problem-or-opportunity/

We're going to talk about a new law that was signed into effect December 20th of 2019 as part of the end of the year Appropriations Act.

It makes it easier for small businesses to set up the so-called Safe Harbor retirement plans, which had been traditionally very hard for them to set up because of the cost. It also allows part time workers to be eligible to participate in employer plans. Before, the law required that you'd be a full time employee. It also pushes back the age at which retirement plan participants are required to take the so-called minimum distributions from their retirement plans. So they used to have to take them at 70 and a half, and now retirement plan participants can wait till 72 before they start taking those distributions. It also allows traditional IRA owners to keep making contributions to their own IRA and thus tax deferring the gains indefinitely.

It mandates that most non spouses generally have to take an empty IRA account within 10 years. This could cause heirs to certain estates to get more income tax earlier on, and it could also defeat some planning that parents may have had in place for adult children where their adult children were to only get income or to get money from the estate over time.  Finally, the Act also allows 401k plans to finally offer annuities.

If you have an IRA, particularly, it significantly changes how you're allowed to leave that IRA to your heirs. And if you have a small business, it can provide a huge number of new opportunities for you when it comes to planning for retirement and providing benefits for your employees.