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Limitation on Mark-Up of Subcontractor Costs

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 04.30.07

In an interim rule effective immediately, the Defense Department amended DFARS on April 26, 2007 to permit the Government to "disallow" (including on firm-fixed price contracts) "excessive pass through charges" on subcontracts where the total subcontract costs exceeds 70 percent of the contract value. "Excessive" charges are defined to include costs and profit that the contractor cannot demonstrate to the contracting officer add something other than "no or negligible" substantive value to performance, so any contractor with an accounting practice that allocates G&A to subcontract costs could run afoul of these rules.

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Client Alert | 2 min read | 05.27.25

Federal Circuit Resolves Circuit Split on Scope of IPR Estoppel

As part of the 2012 America Invents Act, statutory estoppel was included to balance the interests of patent owners and patent challengers following an inter partes review (“IPR”).  Estoppel prevents an IPR petitioner from later asserting in court that a claim “is invalid on any ground that the petitioner raised or reasonably could have raised” during the IPR.  35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2).  As applied, estoppel prevents petitioners from later relying in district court or in ITC proceedings on most patents or printed publications – the limited bases upon which petitioner can rely in an IPR.  But a question remained, and contradictory district court decisions arose, as to whether petitioners would be estopped from relying on a prior art commercial product (known as “device art,” which could not itself have been raised in the IPR) even if a printed publication describing the product (i.e. a patent or technical manual) was available and presumably could have been raised. ...

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