Congress Considers Tweaking IT Spending
Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 10.17.16
On October 5, the Senate Finance Committee sent a letter to commercial information technology providers requesting information about “whether federal agencies, to the fullest extent possible, incorporate preexisting, commercial and non-developmental IT solutions into their modernization efforts and if not, the barriers to their doing so.” Noting that the federal government spent about $80 billion on IT in FY 2015, the committee requested “recommendations” sent to ITContracting@finance.senate.gov by November 2, 2016, for how competition for IT contracts could be broadened by increased use of commercial contracting procedures and fixed-price contracts or changes to evaluation criteria and source selection factors.
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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
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.13.25
