Chris O’Mahoney The Delaware Court of Chancery has shown a renewed interest in holding corporate founders also serving as directors subject to shareholder derivative actions when the founders engaged in self-dealing to leverage control over the board. On October 28, 2013, the Delaware Court of Chancery handed down in the case TVI Corporation et al.…

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Ryan Van Olst In Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. FilmOn X LLC,[1] the D.C. District Court granted Fox Television Stations and several other television network providers a preliminary injunction against FilmOn X for possibly infringing their public performance right under the Copyright Act.  Fox alleged that FilmOn X unlawfully streamed television shows over the Internet…

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By Darshan Chulani, Senior Staff Writer In late September, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims handed down a decision that is widely believed to spell the end of STARS transactions in their current form. Structured Trust Advantaged Repackaged Securities, or STARS, have been in use since the late 90s as a means of generating foreign…

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Ronny Valdes On September 24, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed-in-part, vacated-in-part, and remanded a decision of the Board of Patent Appeals & Interferences (BPAI),[1] on U.S. Patent No. 6,260,097 (ʼ097 patent), regarding claim construction and obviousness of the patent.[2]  The Federal Circuit notably clarified the process the BPAI…

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Breanne M. Hoke In Joffe et al. v. Google, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruled that Google could be sued for illegal wiretapping under the federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2511,[1] when the company collected data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks through its use of Street View photographs.[2]  The Ninth…

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This week, the New York Opera and the Brooklyn Academy of Music are featuring the U.S. premier of Anna Nicole, an Opera based on the “tumultuous life of Anna Nicole Smith – stripper, playmate, and formidable tabloid queen.”[1] However, Anna Nicole Smith was also a formidably litigious client. In fact, she made it to the…

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Hunter Deeley Shuanghui International Holdings Limited and Smithfield Foods, Inc. announced in May that Shuanghui would acquire all outstanding shares of Smithfield for $34.00 per share in cash, an acquisition valued at $4.7 billion.[1]  Upon completion, Shuanghui’s purchase of Smithfield would be the largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese company.[2]  The size…

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In today’s Wall Street Journal, an article appeared discussing the decline of the raw aluminum smelting company Alcoa.[1] The name Alcoa harks back to the 1945 section 2 antitrust case, United States v. Aluminum Co. of America (Alcoa), which most famously stated that a single firm controlling 33% of the relevant market is not enough…

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