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It isn’t law yet, but on December 5, 2013, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a significant patent reform bill known as the "Innovation Act." Although the focus of the legislation is on patent infringement litigation and other patent law revisions, the Innovation Act, H.R. 3309, would also make major changes to Section 365(n) of the Bankruptcy…

Almost every year, changes are made to the set of rules that govern how bankruptcy cases are managed — the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. The changes address issues identified by an Advisory Committee made up of federal judges, bankruptcy attorneys, and others.

Rule Amendments. This year the rule amendments mainly affect bankruptcy cases…

Cash Is King. An army may march on its stomach, but for companies, it’s liquidity that keeps the business going. For many companies, typical sources of liquidity, beyond cash flow from sales or other revenue, are (1) financing from banks or other secured lenders, (2) credit from vendors that can reduce immediate liquidity needs, and (3) when…

It’s well-established that a corporation has an attorney-client privilege and can assert it to keep communications between the corporation and its attorneys confidential. When a corporation is solvent, its officers and directors maintain the right to assert — or waive — the attorney-client privilege on behalf of the corporation, and control who has access to privileged communications.

The …

As mentioned in a recent blog post, the American Bankruptcy Institute has established a Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11. A video of testimony before the Commission’s June 4, 2013 field hearing in New York is available below.

  • At that hearing, I testified on the second panel, discussing intellectual property licenses, their treatment in bankruptcy cases,

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The American Bankruptcy Institute has established a Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11.

  • This afternoon, June 4, 2013, I will be testifying before the Commission about intellectual property licenses, their treatment in bankruptcy cases, and potential reforms to address several key issues. 
  • Lawrence Gottlieb, my colleague at Cooley LLP in our Corporate Restructuring and

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As discussed in an earlier post called "Going Up: Bankruptcy Dollar Amounts Will Increase On April 1, 2013," various dollar amounts in the Bankruptcy Code and related statutory provisions were increased for cases filed on or after today, April 1, 2013. Now several official bankruptcy forms have been revised to reflect these new dollar amounts.…

A Difficult Problem. Imagine that your company is facing a government investigation, requiring you to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and costs, while being threatened with substantially more legal expense. That financial burden is simultaneously starving the company of cash needed to grow the business, and cash balances are heading…