Agency Acceptably Disqualifies Offeror For Refusal To Wall Off Employee
Client Alert | 1 min read | 03.26.09
In Kellogg Brown & Root Servs., Inc. (Feb. 23, 2009), the agency excluded KBR from two future Army task order competitions when the agency's CO had inadvertently forwarded source selection sensitive and contractor proprietary information to KBR's contracts manager and program manager and KBR later refused to "wall off" or isolate the project manager from the task order competitions. GAO upheld the exclusion, even though the agency admitted that it could not definitively conclude that KBR had actually obtained an unfair competitive advantage and even though the company had taken steps to permanently delete the sensitive information from its computers and email servers and the program manager had signed a sworn statement that he had not retained the sensitive information and could not remember the contents of the email.
Insights
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
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.13.25
