Profit Recoverable in Commercial Item Termination
Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 01.05.15
In SWR, Inc. (Dec. 15), the ASBCA ruled that the termination for convenience of a commercial item contract, before any services had been ordered, still entitled the contractor to "fair compensation" under a more expansive interpretation of "reasonable charges" than the board had previously endorsed, including start-up costs, travel expenses, wages, forfeited deposits, lease mitigation charges, settlement expenses, attorney fees, and other operating expenses. With one dissent, the board also held that contractors are entitled to a reasonable profit on all termination-related charges, despite the lack of express allowance for profit in the standard Commercial Items terms.
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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25
Claim construction is a key stage of most patent litigations, where the court must decide the meaning of any disputed terms in the patent claims. Generally, claim terms are given their plain and ordinary meaning except under two circumstances: (1) when the patentee acts as its own lexicographer and sets out a definition for the term; and (2) when the patentee disavows the full scope of the term either in the specification or during prosecution. Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012). The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp. highlights that patentees can act as their own lexicographers through consistent, interchangeable usage of terms across the specification, effectively defining terms by implication.
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.14.25
Microplastics Update: Regulatory and Litigation Developments in 2025
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