Attribution of Affiliate Past Performance Improper Without Proposed Meaningful Involvement in Performance
Client Alert | 1 min read | 12.11.17
In a recent protest decision, Language Select LLP, dba United Language Group (released Dec. 1, 2017), GAO sustained a protest of a Federal Supply Schedule blanket purchase agreement by the Social Security Administration for worldwide telephone interpreter services because the agency improperly credited the awardee with the experience and past performance of a subsidiary division based on identification of the division on the awardee’s stationary and in its FSS contract, even though the awardee’s proposal made no mention of the division’s resources nor any meaningful involvement in the awardee’s performance under the BPA, holding that common management is insufficient to support awarding past performance credit for an affiliate. GAO also sustained on the bases that the agency held unequal discussions with the awardee and the agency failed to provide (and document) a rational basis for discounting the significance of the awardee’s recent termination for cause on a similar contract.
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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
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