First One Deals With “Patent Trolls” Hit With Patent Fee-Shifting Exposure.
John O’Rourke, Patrick Soon, and Rebecca Bellow have written a colorfully titled article “Silver, Garlic, and Attorney’s Fees.” It focuses upon one of the initial post-Octane Fitness decisions where a plaintiff “patent troll” was ordered to pay attorney’s fees to a defendant in an unsuccessful patent infringement case. U.S. District Judge Cote did order shifting of fees against the unsuccessful “patent troll” in FindTheBest.com, Inc. v. Lumen View Tech. LLC, 13 Civ. 6531 DLC, 2014 WL 2050610 (S.D.N.Y. May 19, 2014), with the authors questioning if this would have occurred absent SCOTUS’ decision in Octane Fitness.
Second One Deals With Structured Personal Injury Settlement and Contingency Fee Recovery Concerns.
For personal injury practitioners, Mary A. Dannelley has written a thoughtful article entitled “Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Beware: Structured Settlements Can Sour the Attorney-Client Relationship.” The main problem focuses on how a contingency fee should be paid in the event of a structured settlement, especially if the contingency fee agreement is silent on the subject. The big case in this area is Knight v. Aqui, 966 F.Supp.2d 989 (N.D. Cal. 2013), which provides a virtual “roadmap” on this subject. We will not dwell on the details, but this article is very useful in analyzing Knight and California ethical rules—but it does suggest that clarity in the retention agreement is a must to avoid problems.
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