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This week the Third Circuit decided two issues of first impression in the circuit: (1) when a claim of joint authorship arises and accrues under the Copyright Act; and (2) whether courts are imbued with the authority to cancel copyrights. Tina Lindsay and Peter Brownstein worked for a direct mailing list company. While there, they began working on their own venture: an ethnic identification system for purposes of direct marketing. Lindsay developed the step-by-step rules, and she enlisted Brownstein to develop the code....

The coronavirus slump is officially here. Revenue for law firms has already taken a hit, and the layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts are coming daily. There is, unfortunately, no expectation that the economic situation will improve dramatically in coming months. For solo and small firm attorneys, questions about viability moving forward are becoming pressing. Below is a brief list of options for solo and small firm attorneys looking to survive in the coming months....

US v. Miller, No. 09-2791, concerned a challenge to the district court’s imposition of a 120-months’ sentence upon a defendant convicted of traveling in interstate commerce to engage in prohibited sexual conduct with a fourteen-year-old girl. As stated in the decision: “An above guidelines sentence is more likely to be reasonable if it is based on factors that are sufficiently particularized to the individual circumstances of the case rather than factors common to offenders with like crimes....

“Let’s say you want to fly back to Washington, and you find yourself on the no-fly list. You’re sitting in an airport, stranded. You think, ‘My God, I went to law school, I work for [the Justice Department], in my heart I know I did nothing wrong.’ What do you do?” The plaintiffs want the federal courts to demand due process, but the government claims that selection procedures and other criteria associated with the list must remain secret to protect investigations and to avoid giving terrorists ideas for avoiding detection....

It is a rare occasion when the Supreme Court reverses itself, but what about Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr.? It has happened, for example, when Chief Justice Roberts changed his vote on Obamacare. In that case, he flipped from the conservative majority to the liberal dissent. Now court watchers are speculating that he has changed his view on same-sex marriage. Although that decision left the building two years ago, it matters again because there’s a little rustling of the tea leaves at the Supreme Court....

This week, San Francisco became the first major city to ban facial recognition technology for surveillance. Others are sure to follow. Sommerville, Massachusetts, and Oakland, California, are expected to adopt bans of their own. They are designed to apply to local government generally, and police agencies in particular. Advocates say it is part of a trend to protect individual privacy and civil rights. Several California communities have enacted similar laws, but the whole state seems to be saying that some tech just goes too far....

It was business as usual for Adam Winarske back on June 29, 2011. He was meeting a man named Fergel to sell him a handgun at the parking lot of a shopping mall. Little did he know that Fergel was a police informant; a reliable one at that. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a new informant can be a reliable enough source for police to believe there is probable cause of a criminal activity occurring....

The previous four Presidential administrations have differed in the judicial nomination process – not just on who they nominate, which is to be expected, but even on how they evaluate nominees. Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump did not give the American Bar Association information about nominees prior to revealing them to the public, for example, breaking with a tradition that began with President Eisenhower. While President Biden has said ABA review plays a valuable role, he is also breaking with the tradition of inviting the ABA to evaluate nominees prior to announcing them publicly....

Criminal Sexual Conduct Habeas Petition In Danforth v. Crist, No. 05-3987, a prosecution for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, the court affirmed the denial of petitioner’s habeas petition where 1) Crawford v. Washington did not apply retroactively to petitioner’s case; 2) petitioner failed to show a clearly established right to be present when a videotaped statement is made under federal law; and 3) the trial court did not make an unreasonable determination of the facts in finding the victim’s statement reliable despite its finding that the victim was incompetent to testify at trial....

US v. Doe, 09-2615, concerned a challenge to the district court’s sentence of 24 months’ imprisonment upon a defendant following revocation of his supervised release, with the objective of helping him recover from his cocaine addiction. Restrepo v. Attorney General, 07-4741, concerned a Colombian citizen’s petition for review of the BIA’s removal order based on a determination that he committed an aggravated felony. In denying the petition, the court held that, because petitioner’s conviction falls within the ambit of “sexual abuse of a minor,” which constitutes an aggravated felony under section 1101(a)(43), the court lacks jurisdiction to review the BIA’s order....

Fast Track programs, which offer shorter sentences in exchange for expedited plea and sentencing procedures, became popular in the ’90s when U.S. Attorneys began implementing the programs to help manage an exploding volume of immigration-related cases. Eastern Missouri, however, does not have a Fast Track program, which raises an interesting question: Should defendants in regions that lack Fast Track programs automatically receive harsher sentences than their law-breaking counterparts in Fast Track regions?...

The Supreme Court resolved a narrow, but long-standing circuit conflict this week in Kloeckner v. Solis, a jurisdictional dispute about the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). Monday, the Court ruled that a federal employee who claims that an agency action appealable to the MSPB violates an anti-discrimination statute should seek judicial review in district court — not the Federal Circuit — regardless of whether the MSPB decided her case on procedural grounds or on the merits....

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has bucked 88 years of precedent in holding that the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot use administrative law judges in securities fraud cases because it violates the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to a trial by jury “[i]n Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars.” However, Congress can assign certain actions to agencies and circumvent the jury trial right when the proceeding focuses on “public rights....

In an action for negligent operation of a boat, the dismissal of the action for lack of admiralty jurisdiction is reversed, where the location of the accident and its connection to traditional maritime activity sustained admiralty jurisdiction. Read Mission Bay Jet Sports, LLC v. Colombo, No. 08-56142 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted June 3, 2009 Filed June 24, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Rymer Counsel For Appellants: Sterling J. Stires, Law Offices of Charles S....

Trademarks are used to distinguish one product from another in the marketplace. A recent trademark application by the Ohio State University proposes that nothing says OSU like the letters THE. The university has a scheme to market t-shirts, hats, and other items with the innocuous word “The” in bold capital letters and a small version of the university logo underneath. Josh Gerben, the Washington, D.C. trademark lawyer who unearthed the application, has suggested that the application will likely be denied by the US Patent and Trademark Office, at least initially, because it may be unclear that the word is being used to identify the products....

We have less than a month until the end of the 2011 Term. Less than a month until we learn the decision in the biggest case of the decade. Less than a month until we have to speculate on what will be the next “biggest case of decade,” (since it really is an arbitrary designation). We’re not expecting further opinions or orders this week from the Court, so we’re going to get a head start on our favorite summer activity: speculating about the next Supreme Court term....

Imagine this: You have a client, a nineteen-year-old boy, who is under arrest for murder. He doesn’t fully know his right to counsel and tells the police that his father “asked me to ask you guys – uh, to get me a lawyer.” Last week, Tio Dinero Sessoms was denied habeas relief by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In his petition, he argued that he was denied the right to counsel when he unequivocally asserted the right to Sacramento homicide officers....

Well, here’s some exciting news for your weekend. This morning the Supreme Court granted certiorari to all seven Obamacare contraception mandate appeals. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers are required to provide plans that cover employee’s birth control. Certain religious, non-profit employers are exempted from that requirement: they just send in a form and someone else handles employee contraception. But, petitioners argue, even that contraception exemption forces them to participate in something that’s against their religious belief....

The Supreme Court recently weighed in on an issue that has split federal courts for years: Whether a person who enters the United States illegally but obtains temporary protected status can apply for a green card. The unanimous ruling holds that under current immigration law, those who enter the country illegally were not “admitted” as required for permanent residency. Federal Courts Split Roughly 400,000 people currently live in the United States with temporary protected status....

Agreeing to review an $8.5 million class-action settlement, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether a “cy pres” settlement was close enough. The cy-pres doctrine allows courts to approve settlements for “as close as possible” to the donor’s intent. In Frank v. Gaos, Google settled claims that the company wrongfully shared users’ search queries with the settlement money going to the plaintiffs’ attorneys and third parties instead of the class members....