Report Highlights Problematic Katrina Contracting Practices
Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 02.28.06
The final report of The House Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina (http://katrina.house.gov/) criticizes all levels of government for using problematic contracting practices, such as orally changing the scope of work in the middle of an engagement and awarding most contracts on a sole-source basis or pursuant to limited competition. Among other proposed reforms, the Committee recommends that the Government enter into contracts in advance of each hurricane season to avoid the chaos and potential for fraud and abuse associated with contracting under intense pressure.
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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.
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