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Indiana

Indiana Civil & Business Lawyer

A solo lawyer writing about consumer, probate and business related legal issues with an emphasis on Indiana. Such is the general outline but mostly it allows for me to express views on practicing law and legal issues from an Indiana solo attorney's viewpoint.

Post Frequency: 14.7/day

Last Entry: March 01, 2010 at 17:59:00

Trademarks: Barbie Beats Bratz

Posted on December 17, 2008
I do like a good trademark fight. span style="font-style: italic;"The London Times Online/span reports a href="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article5294026.ece"span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Barbie triumphs over span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Bratz/span in court battle/span/a:br /br /div style="text-align: justify;" /divblockquotediv style="text-align: justify;""An uneasy peace returned to the dolls' house this week after a prim and proper Barbie finally repelled a four-year siege by an unruly gang of gatecrashers called span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"Yasmine/span, Chloe, Sasha and Jade...

Indiana Bankruptcies Up

Posted on December 17, 2008
Is news of more bankruptcy filings in Indiana any real surprise? a style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;" href="http://74.219.68.10/ilemg/ILEmails/2008_12_16_ILDaily_Standard/Articles/2939.htm?1=1amp;EGEmailID=462amp;PublicationID=1amp;PublicationDesc=Indiana%20Lawyer%20Dailyamp;EmailType=Standard"Bankruptcy filings up in Indiana/a comes from span style="font-style: italic;"The Indiana Lawyer/span:br /div style="text-align: justify;"/divblockquotediv style="text-align: justify;""Bankruptcy cases in federal courts have increased more than 30 percent in the fiscal year ending in September as compared to the 2007 fiscal year...

How far will FAR go with Katrina? New disclosure rules cover three year period after final payment on federal contracts. Ť slabbed

Posted on December 17, 2008
span style="font-style: italic;"slabbed/span continues its examination of the Rigsby ssiters and the Katrina qui tam cases with a style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;" href="http://slabbed.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/how-far-will-far-go-with-katrina-new-disclosure-rules-cover-three-year-period-after-final-payment-on-federal-contracts/"How far will FAR go with Katrina? New disclosure rules cover three year period after final payment on federal contracts/a: "br /div style="text-align: justify;"blockquoteObviously, the Rule will impact qui tam claims in the future and may have an impact on the claim filed by the Rigsby sisters...

Lucky Not to Sell Alcohol in Scotland

Posted on December 17, 2008
I freely admit a bias: the spirits trade bring out the silliest in government regulation. span style="font-style: italic;"THE FIRM/span'sa href="http://www.thefirmmagazine.com/features/438/More_tea,_vicar?.html" span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"More tea, vicar?/span/a provides a Scottish example:br /div style="text-align: justify;"blockquote "Those of you involved in advising licensees will know that there are very strict new regulations governing the display of alcohol in off sales premises to prevent alcohol harm...

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Indiana Businesses and Property Tax Appeals

Posted on December 16, 2008
The Indianapolis Business Journal's Appeals pay off for biz owners Over 1 in 4 assessments challenged needs read not only for businesses in Marion County but throughout Indiana.More than one in four Marion County commercial and industrial property owners has appealed its property tax assessments this year, and the challenges often are paying off in a big way...

Court: Lawyer necessary in federal litigation

Posted on December 16, 2008
From The Indiana Lawyer comes another reminder that you really do need a lawyer in federal court - Court: Lawyer necessary in federal litigation:"Although the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions of a defendant and his company for violations of the Clean Water Act in an unpublished opinion today, the appellate court wrote a separate opinion to discuss the issue of whether a limited liability corporation can proceed pro se in federal litigation if an attorney had already worked on the case...

About those New ADA Laws

Posted on December 15, 2008
workforce.com asks Are You Ready for the ADA Amendments Act of 2008?:"Kidding aside, employers need to be aware that the standard for what is classified as a disability has been altered significantly. There could be an initial wave of litigation aimed at companies to test the new boundaries of the amendments, so it?s critical that employers are prompt and thorough in managing employment processes and are fully educated on the new compliance requirements...

How to Protect Yourself From a Customer Close to Bankruptcy

Posted on December 14, 2008
MarketWatch had a very gloomy headline last week: More Tribunes, Lehmans likely in coming months. The truth contained in that headline makes it even gloomier.Considering the talk - if not the pushing - of the Big three Automakers towards bankruptcy court, this drive towards bankruptcy seems likely...

Bankruptcy Conference - Chicago in April

Posted on December 14, 2008
The following information came to me via e-mail: Seventh Annual DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal Symposium Into the Sunset: Bankruptcy as Scriptwriter of the Dénouement of Financial Distress Thursday, April 16, 2009 10:30 a.m. ? 5:00 p.m...

Indiana law Blogs

Posted on December 08, 2008
I ran across a few new - to me - Indiana law blogs that might be of interest here.First, Harrison & Moberly publishes a blog here. Not a very extensive list of archives, no RSS feed, and it does seem mostly to be a repository of the firm's employment law newsletters...

Garden Leave: A checklist

Posted on December 08, 2008
Consider this checklist as a work in progress. New cases may come along and change the questions or create new questions.1. Does the position have a salary or is it commission only? a. If salary, the go to 3 b. If commission only, then go to 2...

Hitting Back at The Record Companies

Posted on December 07, 2008
I admit the music downloading cases are not part of my practice but they are so interesting that I cannot ignore them either. (See my earlier posts here and here and here for examples.) lexisONE(R) supplied Law Professor Fires Back At Song-Swapping Lawsuits:A Harvard Law School professor has launched a constitutional assault against a federal copyright law at the heart of the industry's aggressive strategy, which has wrung payments from thousands of song-swappers since 2003...

Patent and Trademark Glossary

Posted on December 06, 2008
The federal Patent and Trademark Office has an online glossary of legal terms. I find this interesting on several levels. Mark it down as a useful too.GlossaryAn alphabetized, hyperlinked glossary of terms used on the USPTO web site and a continual "work in progress"- suggest terms for the glossary to the webmaster@uspto...

Attorney fees and Frivolous/Bad Faith Litigation

Posted on December 06, 2008
I try not to discuss Not-For-Publication cases. We cannot cite them as law and that tends to confuse the non-lawyers who stop by here. They can be handy for locating cases that we can use for precedent. Also, I think they can be useful in and of themselves...

Small Businesses - Tips for The Hard Times

Posted on December 05, 2008
All right, I cannot think of another phrase that describes our economy so well as this: it sucks. I offer these posts as examples of what is good about being a small business owner right now.From The Pinque, Inc. Diaries:It's a great time to be a small business owner!Despite what they've been telling you, it's a great time to own a small business...

Small Businesses - Tips for The Hard Times

Posted on December 04, 2008
For anyone who is not being affected by the current economic crisis, I commend your luck and good fortune. I have been seeing a decline in my business for the past two months. As a former partner of mine used to say, lawyers get paid with after tax dollars and that makes us sort like a canary in the coal mine when it comes to economics...

Should Startups Patent Their Inventions

Posted on December 04, 2008
Until I read IPWatchdog.com's Don't Get A Patent? Plainly Ridiculous! I had no idea that anyone would advise businesses that they do not need patents.Increasingly on the Internet invention advertising is taking an odd and seemingly inexplicable turn toward advising independent inventors to not seek patent protection, which is undeniably bad advice that will undoubtedly cause much disappointment and heart break for those who actually follow it...

Avoiding Lawsuits When Hired by a Competitor

Posted on December 03, 2008
Network World's How to Avoid Getting Sued by a Former Employer focuses on the IT worker but its general advice is not something that any employee being hired by a competitor should ignore.I also think there are some good pointers here for employers. Litigation costs run in both directions...

Trade Secrets - How to Handle Information

Posted on December 02, 2008
Since the business owner must protect their trade secrets for a successful trade secrets case, I suggest reading The Financial Post's Andrew Crane discusses how to manage competitive intelligenceBut it's not just in the glamorous high-stakes world of F1 where the spectre of industrial espionage raises its head...

Trade Secrets: More Papermaster, IBM and Apple News

Posted on December 01, 2008
I find this case is staying interesting. For example, as MacWorld reports in IBM posts $3 million bond in Papermaster lawsuit the case has some points that apply generally.The $3 million bond was put in place to pay Papermaster should the court decide IBM?s case is without merit and the injunction against Papermaster shouldn?t have been granted...

Starting a Business with a Partner?

Posted on November 30, 2008
Let me say I am not using partner in its technical sense. I know of small corporations where they speak of one another as partners. I do not know many lawyers who like the idea of a partnership compared with a corporation or a limited liability company...

Family and Medical Leave Act U.S. Department of Labor Final Rule

Posted on November 29, 2008
New from the U.S. Department of Labor, its FMLA, Final Rule: "The revised Final Regulations (PDF) respond to over 4,600 public comments received in response to the Department?s February 2008 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) (PDF) , which proposed changes to the current FMLA regulations...

Federal Trade Commission exploring the evolving market for intellectual property

Posted on November 29, 2008
That is what I get out of this notice from the GPO under FR Doc E8-27673. Not that I can be there but surely this deserves some attention. Do mortgage derivatives come under intellectual property? (Pardon my sarcasm). Being deadly serious: intellectual property underlies all that tangible property we sell to ourselves and to other companies...

Employment Law: New Regulations Proposed for Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act

Posted on November 28, 2008
Notice of Rights and Duties Under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act [Rules and Regulations] [12/19/2005]: "SUMMARY: On March 10, 2005, the Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS) of the Department of Labor (Department or DOL) issued an interim final rule to implement a requirement of the Veterans Benefits Improvement Act of 2004 (VBIA), Public Law 108-454 (Dec...

Indiana Venture Capital Shutting Down But There is Good News

Posted on November 28, 2008
The Indianapolis Business Journal reported Indiana Venture Center shutting downThe Indiana Venture Center, a local not-for-profit that mentors Hoosier entrepreneurs and startup companies, is shutting its doors. President Jim Eifert announced today that it will end operations Dec...

Trade Secrets and Whistleblowers: Partial Following up on the Rigsby Sisters.

Posted on November 28, 2008
I wrote about the Rigsby sisters in Trade Secrets Meets Whistleblower Law. I see that Slabbed has added another article on the subject: The Scheme ? the best place to hide a needle (Chapter 1). Also Wordpress has a lsiting of blogs on the Rigsby sisters and qui tam.

Tips on Protecting Your Trade Secrets

Posted on November 27, 2008
I found Keeping Your Rivals From Minding Your Business in The New York Times and realized I had a follow up to my post Trade Secrets: What Happens When Sending Secrets by E-mail. Among the article's suggestions that I think apply most to trade secrets issues:HANG ON TO YOUR LAPTOP In a survey by RSA Security, 10 percent of the respondents acknowledged they had lost their laptops or cellphones at some point...

Alcoholic Beverages: Brewery Blogs

Posted on November 26, 2008
I know the posts here about alcoholic beverages have been few and far between. Frankly, several things have kept me from pursuing this area of law as much as I expected when I started this blog. It will be a New Year's Resolution to do something about developing this practice area next year...

Online resource for the Lawyers - Free Research Sites

Posted on November 26, 2008
Thanks to Robert Ambrogi's article, Tour the Legal Web's New Sites for the heads up on Quest and the review of Lexis Web. I had run into Lexis Web earlier. Here is the whole of Ambrogi's review:LexisNexis has launched a beta version of its Web search tool, called Lexis Web...

Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work: The FTC's Division of Marketing Practices

Posted on November 23, 2008
The Pacific Daily News' Agency protects consumers from marketing scams has a good description of the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Marketing Practices. The Division of Marketing Practices touches on many busienss and should be of great interest to all consumers...

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