Gibbons Law Alert
The risks inherent in the maintenance and storage of confidential information present an ongoing challenge to daily operations. Cyber insurance may be an appropriate mechanism to mitigate those risks. But – BUYER BEWARE – broad exclusions and other conditions in a cyber policy can hack into coverage and leave your company uninsured and exposed to significant liability for defense costs, liability payments, and regulatory damages.
It’s been more than a year since the Delaware General Corporation Law added sections 204 and 205, allowing boards of directors to ratify, or the Court of Chancery to validate, defective corporate acts, including the issuance of stock that did not fully comply with corporate formalities. The Delaware General Assembly’s unanimous adoption of sections 204 and 205 elevated substance over form by giving effect to corporate action that at all times was treated as validly authorized, even if the action was technically deficient.
The Supreme Court of the United States declined to review the New Jersey Supreme Court decision in U.S. Legal Services Group v. Atalese, holding that an arbitration provision in a consumer contract was not enforceable because the contract’s language waiving the consumer’s right to sue was not clear and unambiguous. The New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision, which affects the enforceability of arbitration provisions interpreted under New Jersey law, directs that such provisions must clearly notify the parties of their waiver of the right to bring a lawsuit.
With the close of the United States Supreme Court’s 2014-15 term, we offer this wrap up of the Court’s term, focusing on the Court’s most important business and commercial cases (excluding patent cases). Omnicare, Inc. v. Laborers Dist. Council Constr. Indus. Pension Fund: It is widely known that if the registration statement an issuer files with the SEC contains an untrue statement of a material fact or omits to state a material fact necessary to make the statements therein not misleading, then a purchaser of securities sold pursuant to the registration statement may sue the issuer for damages.
Five years ago, in Quinlan v. Curtiss-Wright, 204 N.J. 239 (2010), the New Jersey Supreme Court adopted a balancing test for trial courts to use to determine if the unauthorized taking of confidential company documents by an employee constituted protected activity in support of the employee’s claim under the Law against Discrimination. Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Quinlan decision does not preclude criminal charges from being brought against an employee who steals confidential documents from her employer in support of a whistleblower lawsuit. On June 23, 2015, in a 6-1 ruling, the New Jersey Supreme Court decided State v. Saavedra, and upheld the denial of defendant Ivonne Saavedra’s motion to dismiss the indictment against her for official misconduct and theft by unlawful taking of movable property. The high court found that the State presented a prima facie showing to the grand jury with regard to the two charges, that the State did not withhold exculpatory information from the grand jury regarding defendant’s intent to use the stolen documents in her civil lawsuit, and – most importantly for employers – that the indictment does not violate due process standards or public policy by conflicting with Quinlan.
Online newspapers, internet service providers, and website hosts have standing to assert the constitutional rights of their users, according to the New Jersey Appellate Division’s recent unpublished decision in Trawinski v. Doe. In Trawinski, the Appellate Division affirmed the denial of a plaintiff’s request for a subpoena requiring NJ.com to disclose the identity of an anonymous commenter. Underlying plaintiff’s request were allegedly defamatory remarks made by an anonymous poster using the screen name “EPLifer2” concerning plaintiff and her husband, a borough council member of Elmwood Park.
On May 28, 2015, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California certified a class of email users in a privacy action that claims Yahoo Inc. (“Yahoo”) violated the federal Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) and California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”) through its practice of scanning and analyzing emails of non-Yahoo Mail subscribers in order to display targeted ads to Yahoo Mail subscribers. In re Yahoo Mail Litigation, No. 13-CV-04980-LHK, (N.D. Cal. 2015). Plaintiffs are non-Yahoo Mail subscribers who sent emails to Yahoo Mail subscribers from non-Yahoo email accounts and allege that Yahoo routinely copies and extracts key words from emails and stores this information for later use. Plaintiffs allege that Yahoo’s practices violate § 2702(a)(1) of the SCA, which prohibits, among other items, divulging the contents of a communication without consent and § 631 of CIPA, which prohibits the recording or reading of any type of communication without the prior consent of all parties.
New Jersey, like many states, is suspicious of judgments by confession and allows them to be issued only if the procedures in R. 4:45-2 are strictly followed. Among those procedures is a requirement that the prospective judgment debtor be given notice of the prospective judgment creditor’s application for entry of judgment and an opportunity to be heard.
On June 15, 2015, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) introduced a new pilot program, beginning on June 19, 2015, that will allow appellants with multiple ex parte appeals pending before the PTAB to obtain an expedited review of one appeal in return for withdrawing another appeal. The stated goals of this program are to allow appellants with multiple ex parte appeals pending to have greater control over the priority with which their appeals are decided and reduce the backlog of appeals before the PTAB.
Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) has again named Gibbons among The World’s Leading Patent Professionals in its 2015 edition of IAM Patent 1000. David E. De Lorenzi – Chair of the Gibbons Intellectual Property Department – and George W. Johnston, Counsel in the Department, were also recognized as being among IAM’s leading patent practitioners. This is the fifth straight year that IAM has recognized Gibbons and Mr. De Lorenzi.