1. Home
  2. |Insights
  3. |No Preferential T&C's Mods Allowed for Commercial Item Buys

No Preferential T&C's Mods Allowed for Commercial Item Buys

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 06.20.11

In Diebold, Inc. (June 2, 2011), GAO sustained a protest when the Comptroller of the Currency had substituted new terms and conditions beneficial to the awardee into a commercial items contract that were not part of the underlying solicitation. While GAO agreed that FAR § 12.302(a) gives an agency discretion to tailor the terms of FAR Clause 52.212-4 to the market practices and conditions for a particular commercial item acquisition, it instructed that all offerors must compete on a common basis against the agency's true needs and so "tailoring" of the terms must occur prior to the submission of final proposals.

Contacts

Insights

Client Alert | 4 min read | 04.01.26

Supreme Court Rejects “Mere Knowledge” Standard for Contributory Copyright Infringement in Cox v. Sony, Reverses $1 Billion Judgment Against Cox

On March 25, 2026, in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a $1 billion verdict against Cox. The judgment was the result of a jury trial in which Sony claimed that Cox was liable for contributory copyright infringement because it knew that its customers were using its service to infringe yet did not respond with sufficient diligence to prevent that infringement....