Trick or mistreat?

10/2/12

By Rebecca Hamilton

Five registered sex offenders filed suit in a California federal court on Friday, arguing that restrictions placed on them for Halloween violated their free speech rights.

The suit follows a decision by Simi Valley to ban sex offenders from putting up holiday displays and outside lighting during the trick-or-treat fest. The restrictions also require sex offenders to display a sign on their front doors saying that no candy will be handed out, according to The Ventura County Star.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the lawyer for the sex offenders, Janice Belluci, said the requirement was similar to branding: "We can think of what happened in Nazi Germany, where Jews had to appear in public wearing yellow stars."

California is not the only place where Halloween spurs heightened concerns about sex offenders. An annual Operation Candy Cane in New York involves state parole officers visiting registered sex offenders on Halloween to check they have not violated a curfew requiring them to stay home and open the door only to law enforcement officers.

Birth control provision upheld

10/2/12

By Suhrith Parthasarathy

A St Louis federal judge has dismissed a challenge to the healthcare law's mandate that employees offer contraception coverage, the first decision on the merits of the provision, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In a ruling on Sept. 28, U.S. District Judge Carole Jackson held that the mandate is constitutionally valid and does not infringe the First Amendment freedom to practice religion.

Frank O'Brien, a devout Catholic and owner of O'Brien Industrial Holdings, a St Louis-based mining company, filed the action in March, claiming the law's requirement that employers offer health plans covering birth control violated his religious beliefs. (The company has a statue of Jesus in its main lobby and its statement of values includes references to the Ten Commandments.) The suit, according to the Post-Dispatch, said the contraception mandate forces the company to make a choice between complying with the law or facing "ruinous fines that would have a crippling impact on their ability to survive economically."

But the judge disagreed and held that the mandate does not represent a substantial burden on an employer's ability to practice religion. "Frank O'Brien is not prevented from keeping the Sabbath, from providing a religious upbringing for his children, or from participating in a religious ritual such as communion," wrote Jackson.

Justice restored

10/2/12

By Rebecca Hamilton

The 300th prisoner nationwide to be exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence was released from a Louisiana prison on Friday. (Hat tip: ABA Journal.)

Death row inmate Damon Thibodeaux falsely confessed to the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step-cousin back in 1996. Since being incarcerated, Thibodeaux spent up to 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, according to The Washington Post. Though the inmate appealed his conviction in 1999 -- on the grounds that his confession was coerced during a nine-hour investigation -- it took a reinvestigation that involved DNA testing, initiated in 2007, for Thibodeauxto convince the court he was innocent.

His release comes as a Connecticut state appeals court on Monday ordered a new trial of another man who confessed to rape and murder back in 1989.

Richard Lapointe, a mentally disabled man, confessed after police tricked him into believing they had evidence against him, according to a report on National Public Radio. "If the evidence shows I was there, and that I killed her, then I killed her, but I don't remember being there," he told police.

The decision to order a new trial for Lapointe was not made on the basis of DNA evidence but because the court found that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have exonerated him. Like Thibodeaux's case, Lapointe's suggests that innocent people sometimes do confess to serious crimes, a phenomenon that most experts used to think did not happen.

Getting tuff

10/2/12

By Caitlin Tremblay

Rapper and fashion enthusiast Kanye West is being sued -- again -- this time for allegedly using a song sample without permission, according to Billboard (hat tip: Spin).

Kanye's label, Roc-A-Fella, paid a $62,500 license fee to use a part of blues singer Eddie Bo's "Hook and Sling, Part I" in two tracks on Kanye's No. 1 album, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy": "Who Will Survive in America?" and "Lost in the World." However, TufAmerica, the label that owns the rights to "Hook and Sling," says the sample was used further without permission. TufAmerica claims Kanye and Roc-A-Fella "failed and refused to enter into written license agreements that accounted for their multiple other uses" of the song, which include a music video for "Lost in the World" and Kanye's short film for his song "Runaway."

The label is seeking damages for an undisclosed amount. The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan and also named Roc-A-Fella parent company Universal Music Group as a defendant.

In May, TufAmerica lodged a similar suit against the Beastie Boys for sampling Trouble Funk songs on their albums "License to Ill" and "Paul's Boutique." Universal was also named in that suit.

Business plan

10/2/12

By Rebecca Hamilton

Internet start-ups might be a high-risk investment, including for the law firms that take them on as clients, but they can also be high-reward if the company takes off -- which is why Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is bending over backwards to snag the business, reports The New York Times' Dealbook.

In addition to its trendy San Francisco location and an office that Dealbook describes as having "all the markings of a start-up," Wilson Sonsini has regular meet-and-greets with start-ups and provides free standardized legal documents. Partner Yoichiro Taku even runs a blog, http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/, that provides free legal guidance to newbies in the Internet field. " opefully, when these start-ups need a lawyer, they think of us," one of the Wilson Sonsini lawyers told Dealbook.

Chaos theory

10/2/12

By Dan Brillman

The Federal Circuit appeals court was born 30 years ago in part to streamline patent cases scattered across different appeals courts with inconsistent levels of expertise. But is patent litigation any less chaotic than it was in 1982?

Author Timothy Lee says no. In an essay for Ars Techica entitled "How a rogue appeals court wrecked the patent system," Lee writes that the Federal Circuit court has favored patent holders, particularly in software cases, and, in doing so, has spurred an unprecedented age of patent trolls, patent fights and a bottomless pit of Silicon Valley money to support it all.

How did this happen, given that the U.S. Supreme Court had previously held that software can't be patented, which would naturally limit patent litigation? According to Lee, a pivotal decision was the Federal Circuit's 1998 ruling in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial, which held that business methods and strategies are patentable, even if the software they produce isn't. The opinion provided an end run around Supreme Court precedent and helped spur the patent litigation boom, says Lee. As proof he points to Microsoft, which in the 1980s received only five patents. In the 1990s, the software pioneer received 1,116; and a decade later, 12,330.

Instead of simply overseeing the business community, the Federal Circuit began to identify with it, says Lee, who also theorizes that earlier rules, which were more skeptical of patent holders' claims, would have kept patent law as a "legal backwater," and judges wanted a higher profile for themselves and their court.

It's an interesting read, given the shock wave of Apple's recent 10-digit win over Samsung and all the appeals and counter-litigation certain to follow.

Summary Judgments for October 1

Summary Judgments for September 28

Summary Judgments for September 27

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