Federal Judiciary

"Intellectual Property Causes of Action" - SBOT Causes of Action seminar

By Michael Smith

I'm course director for the State Bar's Causes of Action seminar again this year, and worked the Dallas session last Thursday and Friday at the CityPlace conference center (great room but enormously confusing layout otherwise).  That included reprising my 2006 "Intellectual Property Causes of Action" paper from 2006.  As I told the crowd, I had had to make a lot of changes to the patent section of the paper since I last gave it in 2006, what with eBay, In re Seagate and all the other recent decision drastically changing the landscape of patent litigation.  I must have gotten them right because David Donaldson of Graves Doughtery (who was speaking on libel and slander) was all but flashing on Bic lighters in the back row as I went through the recent caselaw changes.   (I'm not quite sure why he was so excited, but I could see his head bobbing up and down all the way through my talk).
The COA road show next moves to Houston on May 15-16, with a video reprise in Austin on July 10-11.  If you're in need of up 11.75 hours of MCLE credit, you can sign up here - you get a free O'Connor's Causes of Action book, and as most Texas practitioners I know will tell you - it's even better than the O'Connor's Federal Rules and the picture on the back cover is better looking (not that I'm contractually obligated to say that or anything).
Seriously, this year we have a really outstanding lineup of speakers, and no one practicing in Texas ought to be without the COA book.  It's an enourmouse time-saver when researching whether you can bring some kind of a case on behalf of a client, or what defenses you can assert to a claim.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).