The Federal Court recently refused to order a defendant to produce samples of cell culture because there was no “reasonable possibility” that testing the samples would yield evidence of patent infringement. In pharmaceutical patent cases, testing samples of a defendant’s product – or samples from a defendant’s process – can lead to crucial evidence of infringement for trial. However, as seen in the Court’s recent decision, a defendant can resist producing samples where the plaintiff only proposes “speculative undefined tests”. … Read the rest
By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Jennifer A. Riley, and Derek S. Franklin Duane Morris Takeaways: On August 21, 2024, Judge William C. Griesbach of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin joined in the fray over whether the long-used two-step process for issuing notice of a Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) collective …
Continue reading “Wisconsin Federal Court Rejects Two-Step “Conditional Certification” FLSA Process”
As we previously reported, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a Final Rule which, on its anticipated effective date of September 4, 2024, will invalidate nearly all preexisting noncompetition agreements and bar employers from entering into such restrictions with workers in the future.
Since then, the Final Rule has been subject to legal challenges nationwide. Shortly before Independence Day, a Texas federal judge preliminarily enjoined the Final Rule on a limited basis, concluding that the plaintiffs in the case … Read the rest
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The Biden administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to temporarily put on hold a portion of two orders issued by federal trial courts in Louisiana and Kentucky that prohibit the Department of Education from enforcing any part of an April 2024 rule implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding.
The two challenges—originally filed in Louisiana by four states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho, along with … Read the rest
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The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a North Dakota truck stop can bring a challenge to a regulation issued 13 years ago by the Federal Reserve Board. In a 6-3 vote divided along ideological lines, the justices significantly expanded plaintiffs’ ability to sue federal regulators, ruling that the statute of limitations to challenge an action by a federal agency begins to run when the plaintiff is injured by the action, even if – as happened in this case … Read the rest
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The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.
The Supreme Court is back in the relist business with a vengeance. On Monday, it granted review of the Biden administration’s newly relisted petition seeking to establish the lawfulness of its efforts to regulate so-called “ghost guns,” as well as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s first-time relist arguing that a plaintiff who won a … Read the rest
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Justice Elena Kagan’s opinion for a sharply divided court in Pulsifer v. United States resolves an ambiguity in the provisions added to federal sentencing law in the First Step Act of 2018, coming down firmly on the side of the government. The problem involves how to read a “safety valve” in federal criminal sentencing laws, which allows defendants to avoid the often lengthy mandatory minimum sentences scattered throughout the federal criminal code. The safety valve requires the defendant to … Read the rest
Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) as an anti-money-laundering initiative in 2021. Absent an applicable exemption,[1] the CTA requires all entities formed or registered to do business in the US (reporting companies) to report their beneficial ownership[2] to the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
In National Small Business United v. Yellen, No. 5:22-cv-01448 (N.D. Ala.), the National Small Business Association (NSBA) and one of its members brought a suit in the US District Court of the Northern … Read the rest