KEYTLaw's Blog

Planning Your Exit Strategy

Phoenix Business Blog: Death and taxes may be two certainties in life, as Benjamin Franklin once pointed out. But for business owners, there’s another sure thing: the time will come to exit the business.

Yet, in working with business owners in peer advisory boards, I’ve found that most business owners don’t plan for that exit. They think about creating an exit strategy, but in most cases, they don’t do anything about it.

Each day, business owners work hard to enhance the value of their business, which, aside from a home, is typically the majority of an owner’s total wealth. But too few of their activities are directed toward increasing the value of the business when it’s time to leave it.

Do Fraudulent Transfer Laws Apply To Domain Names?

Wealth Strategies Journal: Trademarks have always been an important corporate asset, but these days they can be much more so when they are also internet domain names that attract and direct customers to websites where products are sold. Thus, it follows that a business in distress or in a dispute will naturally try to protect this intellectual property from potential creditors and adverse claimants.

Such were the events in the instant cybersquatting case that primarily involved the trademark “igrip” and related webnames. This and similar trademarks were owned by a German company that was well known under this name for making cell phone holders and like accessories.

The primary debtor, Global Intellectual Brands LLC, sold the German company’s cell phone holders but later defaulted on its financial obligations to the German company, whereupon the German company sued Global Intellectual Brands LLC. So far, so bland.

Mattel Hit With $225 Million in Punitive Damages For Copyright Case

ABA Journal: A federal judge in Santa Ana, Calif., today nearly trebled the $88 million that Mattel Inc. was earlier ordered to pay a competitor in a hard-fought case over the rights to the popular Bratz doll line.

Mattel must pay MGA Entertainment Inc. $85 million in punitive damages and $2.5 million in attorney’s fees and costs in addition to the earlier $88 million verdict in the trade-secrets case the Bratz maker filed against the renowned toymaker, ruled U.S. District Judge David Carter. Plus, Mattel owes MGA another $137 million in attorney’s fees and costs for forcing it to defend an unreasonable copyright case, Bloomberg reports.

O’Connor Warns Lawyers and Judges of Judicial Funding Threat

ABA Journal: Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor expressed concern Sunday that not even lawyers and members of the judiciary fully recognize the threat to state courts posed by funding cutbacks being imposed by state legislatures.

“No one, not even lawyers and judges, understands what a financial bind the courts are in,” said O’Connor in a brief interview with the ABA Journal following a program on the current crisis in court funding. As a result, she said, “They’re not ready for the political fights” that may be necessary to assure that legislatures fund the courts at adequate levels. “We have to wake them up.”

O’Connor was one of the panelists at the program sponsored by the Office of the President. Stephen N. Zack of Miami appointed the Task Force on Preservation of the Justice System a year ago when he began his term as ABA president. The panel also included the task force’s co-chairs, David Boies of Armonk, N.Y., and Theodore B. Olson of Washington, D.C.

Does Updating A Blog Post Restart The Statute Of Limitations?

The Volokh Conspiracy: An interesting decision, stemming from the Wolk v. Olson litigation. Here’s the legal background: A publisher is generally not be liable once the statute of limitations (generally a year or longer) has run since the original publication. At that point, under the “single publication rule” — which is generally accepted in most states, and has generally been applied to the Internet in the cases that have considered the issue — no further lawsuits can be brought based on the original post, even if the publisher eventually learns that the post is false. The mere fact that a blog post is being copied to a reader’s computer each time it’s accessed doesn’t constitute a new publication that restarts the statute of limitations.

But do changes to the post constitute a republication, and restart the statute? Sufficiently substantive changes might, but for modest changes — such as most changes in a URL — the answer is likely no. A few cases have so held, see Canatella v. Van De Kamp (9th Cir. 2007) and In re Davis (W.D. Ky. 2006); the judge in this case suggested that she took a similar view, though she ultimately decided the case on other grounds:

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