A recent flurry of highly anticipated and hotly contested decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over the last several weeks highlights that challenges to subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. §101 must be given serious attention by patent owners seeking to enforce their valued IP. These cases reflect the still evolving landscape of patentable subject matter assessment under U.S. law, and the critical importance of anticipating and addressing subject matter eligibility issues prior to filing for a U.S. patent or to pursuing monetization or enforcement of a granted U.S. patent. …

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The U.S. Supreme Court, in its April 18 unanimous decision in Kappos v. Hyatt, ¹ affirmed the Federal Circuit’s Nov. 8, 2010, en banc holding   that there are no restrictions on the ability of a party (in this case a patent applicant qua plaintiff) to introduce new evidence relevant to a disputed issue of fact in a 35 U.S.C. §145 civil action against the Patent and Trademark Office beyond those imposed by the Federal Rules of Evidence and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In such cases the district court must make its own (nondeferential) fact-findings taking said evidence into consideration along with the administrative record in the PTO.

The Supreme Court’s decision has provided the inventive community with a victory against the PTO’s desire to …

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From Capitol Hill to statehouses across the country, federal and state lawmakers are scrambling to introduce legislation to bar employers, and sometimes also educational institutions, from demanding the social media or other passwords of employees, job applicants, and/or students.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) May 2 signed the nation’s first law regulating employer demands that employees or prospective employees disclose their “user name, password, or other means for accessing a personal account or service through an electronic communications device.” …

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In our recent piece, “Get Ahead of the Bus or Be Hit by the Bus,” published in March, we discussed the challenges created by the Whistleblower Program for organizations covered by it and offered a number of practical strategies for organizations to consider in meeting those challenges. The Whistleblower Program represents the most recent effort by Congress to incentivize employees and third parties to share information relating to possible misconduct with the government.

Those incentives are not surprising in light of studies showing that employees are the most likely group to first detect improper conduct. We recommended that organizations consider a number of complimentary practical strategies to strengthen the internal compliance environment and address employee perceptions regarding the utility and safety of speaking up with compliance-related questions.

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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted 5-0 May 1 to propose an interpretative statement that in many cases would exempt foreign regulators from having to indemnify swap data repositories when seeking information from the entities, as required in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Dodd-Frank requires that regulators other than the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission indemnify SDRs when receiving swaps trading data in order to protect SDRs from the expense of possible litigation arising from any misuse of the sensitive information. …

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New rules requiring U.S. banks to report interest on deposits held by nonresident aliens represent a significant advance in global information sharing and may be a factor in getting more countries to sign agreements to automatically exchange information with the United States, practitioners told BNA in recent interviews. …

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