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Déjà Vu: Congress Orders DCAA to Revise Guidance on Access to Internal Audit Reports

Client Alert | 1 min read | 01.15.13

Section 832 of the FY 2013 NDAA requires DCAA to issue new guidance on access to contractors' internal audit reports to "ensure" that requests for access to them "are appropriately documented," following guidance issued by the agency in August 2012. The revised guidance will require DCAA to keep tabs on such requests and responses to them, but sets limits on what internal audit reports can be used for and stops short of language in the Senate version of the bill, under which the contractor's refusal to provide access would have been "a basis for disapproving the contractor business system or systems."


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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25

Design Patent Application Drawings & Prosecution History Must Be Clear (Merely Translucent Won’t Suffice!)

Design patents offer protection for the ornamental appearance of a product, focusing on aspects like its shape and surface decoration, as opposed to the functional aspects protected by utility patents. The scope of a design patent is defined by the drawings and any descriptive language within the patent itself. Recent decisions by the Federal Circuit emphasize the need for clarity in the prosecution history of a design patent in order to preserve desired scope to preserve intentional narrowing (and to avoid unintentional sacrifice of desired claim scope)....