Legal Pad

Heller's Bank Just Wants Someone It Can Really Talk To

Sitting through Thursday's hearing on the dispute between Heller’s creditors and Bank of America, it seems BofA is having a hard time finding anyone to talk to. Those who knew anything about how Heller worked either, the bank's lawyers pretty much said, can’t be found or aren’t talking.

“We are encountering the defense that people at Heller were all very compartmentalized, and there’s nobody who has broad-based knowledge of their financial operations,” Kirke Hasson of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman said in court. “They all have very narrow windows of information and that’s an impediment.”

Really? Nobody? Well, that might explain some things. But certainly somebody knows something.

More apparent obstacles, after the jump.

Patent Group RPX Draws Big Names By Not Being Intellectual Ventures

When John Amster launched RPX Corp. as the cure-all for patent trolls last September, IP observers wondered how the new-fangled IP biz would fare, especially during the recession.

The San Francisco company, which aims to protect its dues-paying members from patent suits by buying dangerous patents off the street, is actually having quite a go of it. It just signed up its thirteenth and fourteenth members: HP and Nokia. Members pay anywhere from $35,000 and $4.9 million depending on the company's size; you can bet Hewlett-Packard and Nokia are on the upper end.

The interesting thing about HP joining is that in the IP world it’s sort of a stamp of really being on the opposite side of the patent trolls. HP has long railed against patent trolls and according to news reports shunned Intellectual Ventures, a giant patent hoarding company that started out as a defensive patent aggregator like RPX, but later turned into as Gawker put it “a patent vampire.” So it looks like part of RPX’s success is in some ways being the anti-Intellectual Ventures.

“That's the key,” said Amster. “What we’re offering is something that is very clean — it is, in their view, on the right side of the line.”

— Zusha Elinson

Experienced Gov't Contracts Lawyers Needed (Just Tryin' to Help)

BETWEEN JOBS An occasional look at how laid-off legal professionals cope with a crisis economy. Or sometimes we just tell you where the jobs are.

Government contracts work normally picks up in down times. But one McKenna Long & Aldridge partner tells us these are especially fruitful times. And that means the firm is hiring.

Tom Abbott, who chairs the group from Los Angeles, says the firm’s interviewing associates for two open positions in L.A., one in San Diego, two in Denver and two in Washington, D.C.

Just make sure you’ve got the experience, pal.

Assemblyman Mendoza Holds Breath, Turns Blue

In our latest installment of Odd Ways to Kill Your Own Bill, we introduce Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, D-Norwalk.

Mendoza on Tuesday brought his AB 377, a controversial bill dealing with payday loans, to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Among the many things consumer groups dislike about AB 377 is a provision raising the cap on these high-interest loans from $300 to $500. The Chronicle whacked the bill and Mendoza pretty good in a June 19 editorial. But with strong backing from lenders and business groups, the bill sailed through the state Assembly.

The AB 377 juggernaut quickly crashed in Senate Judiciary, however. Committee Chairwoman Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, announced that, after discussions among staff and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s office, AB 377 was now a two-year bill — a way of saying the bill is dead for now without, you know, saying it.

Why is everyone so testy? Enjoy a tantrum, after the jump.

Buh Bye?

 

The sidewalk outside the Ninth Circuit today after it was reported that Eric Holder is considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture under the Bush administration. 

– Jason Doiy

Google: We Are So Not Antitrusty, Dude.

Dana Wagner, Google’s most antitrustworthy lawyer.

There’s an interesting debate going on between the editor of Wired and Google’s top antitrust lawyer on this question: is free an antitrust problem?

Wired’s Chris Anderson wrote a column saying that all those things Google gives away for free — search, gmail, maps, directory assistance, new cars — should raise antitrust concerns. How’s that? Anderson argues that because of Google’s dominance in the search advertising market, it can subsidize other products and drive competitors out of the market by offering them for free. It’s like the predatory pricing of the big bad Japanese chipmakers in the days of yore, he writes:

The analogy is something like the semiconductor battles of the 1980s, when Japanese companies were accused of "dumping" (selling for under cost) memory chips in the U.S. market to drive out U.S. competitors.

Google’s antitrust gunslinger responds, then we go to a neutral expert.

Facebook CEO Spied With 'Patent Vampire'

The patent paparazzi have arrived!

Silicon Valley gossip rag Valleywag got a nice picture of bratty Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg being chatted up by what it refers to as a "patent vampire" — Nathan Myhrvold, he of the ominous and secretive patent-hoarding company Intellectual Ventures.

Feared in Silicon Valley (and not just because his name sounds like he’s a Harry Potter villain), Myhrvold’s company has extracted huge licensing deals from tech companies, including this $120 million one from Intuit in May. So what’re Myhrvold and Zuckerberg up to, besides smiling and oddly sipping on Diet Cokes? We’re guessing that Myhvold has a few patents that the Zuckster's company infringes on …is he making an offer that the Facebook Kid can’t refuse?

— Zusha Elinson

Ninth Tackles Wal-Mart Sweatshops, Refunds in Sting Busts

A couple of interesting opinions out of the Ninth Circuit today. One’s notable for employment and perhaps corporate contract folks, and the other’s just interesting for the Ethicist vibe Legal Pad got while reading it.

In Doe v. Wal-Mart Stores, the superstore corporation was sued by a bunch of employees at its foreign suppliers, who wanted to hold Wal-Mart liable for the conditions they worked in. Their claims were based in large part on a code of conduct Wal-Mart included in its contracts with suppliers, which said those whose working conditions don’t adhere to local laws and standards, or who don’t let Wal-Mart inspect their facilities, could have their orders canceled and their relationship with Wal-Mart cut off. At any rate, the plaintiffs accused Wal-Mart of reaping the PR benefits of this clause while being lax in its monitoring or even turning a blind eye. The Ninth Circuit turned down the plaintiffs’ four different theories of liability, affirming the Central District. (Judges Ronald Gould, Betty Fletcher and Raymond Fisher)

And in Kardoh v. United States, a Syrian national arrested — but deported rather than prosecuted — for paying $40,000 for alien registration cards from an undercover agent posing as a corrupt immigration official wanted his money back. Northern District Judge Vaughn Walker said okay, noting that Kardoh hadn’t been convicted, but the Ninth Circuit said no way. (Judges Richard Clifton and Procter Hug, and Federal Circuit Judge Glenn Archer Jr., who was sitting by designation)

— Pam Smith

Things the Pope Doesn't Like: Poverty, Injustice, IP Lawyers

Maybe intellectual property lawyers should worry about facing summary judgment in a higher court than they're used to.

An encyclical letter dated last week expresses some of Pope Benedict XVI's thoughts on the modern world; it's not a pronouncement of church law, more akin to thinking out loud about the problems the pontiff sees confronting the church and the world.  One of those problems is IP lawyers. Pulling the relevant quote from the blog Knowledge Ecology Notes:

"On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care."

So while the Protestant Reformation wasn't exactly popular in the Vatican, apparently patent reformation has one seriously high-profile advocate there.

— Brian McDonough

L.A. Judge Indicted in Alleged Election Bribery Attempt

Los Angeles County Superior Court is already facing a lost business day next week when many of its courthouses go dark Wednesday to cut costs. Now it’s facing the loss of a judge, at least temporarily.

Judge Harvey Silberman was indicted by a grand jury on June 24 on charges that he tried to bribe Deputy District Attorney Serena Murillo not to run against him in the June 2008 election, according to a copy of the indictment provided by the attorney general’s office.

Also charged in the indictment were political consultants Evelyn Alexander and Alan Steinberg. Silberman’s attorney, Daniel Nixon, told the Los Angeles Times that the judge “is appalled and outraged” by the charges and that he is “absolutely innocent.” The two consultants entered not guilty pleas on Wednesday. Silberman’s arraignment was delayed pending the arrival of an out-of-county judge.

Witness list, after the jump