Legal Current

The IP market has traditionally centered on the United States. It remains a key jurisdiction, but change is in the air. With the forthcoming unitary patent system, the European Union may be about to become the epicenter of global patent litigation. The new court will mark a seismic shift in global patent litigation. Assuming all goes as planned, the major difference is that patent owners are going to have the ability to file a single lawsuit that will control almost the entire EU [aside from Spain].

The EU is a market size that is equivalent to the United States. Instead of going to each individual country's national courts, which is what you have to do today, you'll need only one lawsuit. A game changer for patent litigation and it isn't too soon for clients to start positioning and thinking about how to optimize for the split.

Morag MacDonald is an IP attorney with Bird & Bird, based in the UK.

The Equality Effect is a non-profit charity that uses international human rights law as a crowbar to pry open justice for women and girls around the world. Drawing on a team of feisty international lawyers, the equality effect supports its regional legal partners by initiating creative legal advocacy projects to achieve systemic change. In Kenya, The Equality Effect provided support for a constitutional claim against the government for failing to protect girls who had been raped; in May 2013, Kenya’s High Court agreed that the police failure to enforce existing rape laws, and police failure to protect them from rape, is a violation of domestic, regional, and human rights law. The work that led to this landmark ruling informs the equality effect’s newest project in Malawi that also seeks justice for victims of rape.

As three-time Amnesty International Media award-winner and author Sally Armstrong writes: “Once, in a very long while, maybe once in a lifetime, you get to witness a story that shifts the way an entire country or continent sees itself. The process of change is usually daring, certainly time-consuming, invariably costly, occasionally heart-breaking, and eventually an exercise so rewarding that it is the stuff of legends; this is the story of the equality effect.”

The America Invents Act marked  the most significant change in US patent law in the last 50 years. The historic provisions have impacted patent filings and patent litigation, as well as non-practicing entities or “patent trolls” as they are commonly known.

Bernie Knight was general counsel for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office when the America Invents Act was enacted.  He is now a partner with McDermott Will & Emery and talks about the impact of the America Invents Act which he helped shape into law. 

Justice Randy Holland of the Delaware Supreme Court, editor of Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor, discusses the significance of Magna Carta, and the new Muse and Mentor book available on Amazon in print and in e-book form, as well as from Thomson Reuters.

Are missing one-third of your potential clients?  As people increasingly looking for attorneys using mobile and local search, it’s more important than ever to make sure your firm’s website is optimized for those types of searches.

A new white paper from FindLaw explains the importance of making that prospective clients can find you in today’s mobile age.  The white paper can be downloaded for free here:

http://www.lawyermarketing.com/white-papers/are-you-ignoring-a-third-of-your-firms-business-potential/

In this month’s Legal Current podcast, we cover:

-Legal news: A South Carolina boy and his mother are suing the state's DMV over his right to wear his "everyday" makeup in his driver's license photo.

-Legal trends & insights: A woman in North Dakota is facing negligent homicide charges after allegedly surfing Facebook while driving at 85 mph.

-News from Thomson Reuters: Thomson Reuters has been working together with UN Global Pulse, which analyzes big data for UN initiatives, to develop Sustainability Analytics.

-On the legal blogs: An Oregon woman sentenced for setting a 51,000-acre wildfire to help out her "bored firefighter friends."

Harnessing Big Data could be a key for firms seeking to gain competitive advantages and boost their business development efforts.

Catherine Monte, Chief Knowledge Officer of Fox Rothschild and Kimberly Stein, National Manager for Enterprise Content Management Solutions for Thomson Reuters discuss their recently published white paper, produced by ILTA, that explores how firms can benefit from leveraging Big Data through knowledge management tools. 

The 2014 American Bar Association Liberty Achievement Award is being given to Okanier Christian Dark, professor of law and former Dean of Howard University School of Law.

The Liberty Achievement Award was created to honor those attorneys and judges who take a leadership role in promoting diversity in the profession of law by demonstrating, through choices made in their careers and work done in private and/or public sector positions, that they have actively promoted diversity. This would include their own career, leadership positions and work done to advance diverse attorneys in the profession. Other considerations would include significant substantive legal work in areas of diversity, as well as community service and/or pro bono work in diversity.

In this month’s Legal Current podcast, we cover:

-Legal news: The passive aggressive watermelon stabber

-News from Thomson Reuters: Firm Central launches Deadline Assistant and enhances homepage

-Legal trends & insights: Firm sues ex-client over Yelp review that claims firm will ‘take everything you’ve got’

-On the legal blogs: Man Eats His Way Through Lufthansa Lounge Without Ever Lufting Off

You can listen to the episode now by clicking the play button on the built-in player below. We’re also on iTunes – just enter “Legal Current” in the search box.