Trust the Leaders

Issue 18 / Spring 2007

• Options Backdating Fifty-two companies currently under criminal investigation. Two indictments. Multiple guilty pleas. All stemming from the practice known as “options backdating.”
• Guidelines for Physicians on Security and Privacy Every medical practice, regardless of its size, has to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA or the “Act”), a law that was passed by Congress in 1996. The primary focus of the law was to ensure the portability of health insurance coverage for Americans changing jobs. However, the law was also designed to protect the privacy and security of patient records and to bring some uniformity to claims processing.
• Taking Due Care In each case, you have learned that someone else has a patent that may cover your device. Unless you take the proper next step, you could be subject to double or even treble damages and be required to pay your opponent’s attorneys’ fees if your opponent prevails in patent infringement litigation against you. What is that proper next step?
• e-discovery: The federal Rules in the Digital age On December 1, 2006, new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing the conduct of litigation in the United States federal courts took effect — the culmination of more than five years of drafting, discussion and public comment. Language inserted into six separate Federal Rules — 16, 26, 33, 34, 37 and 45 — now guides lawyers and their clients on the implications of litigating in the digital age. Primarily, the new rules address the discovery of electronically stored information, or “ESI”: e-mails, spreadsheets, word files, PowerPoint presentations, databases, accounting and cost records and countless other data compilations that may never be reduced to hard-copy format.
• Boosting Manufacturing Bond Limits Congress recently passed legislation long-awaited by local governments and the domestic manufacturing industry. Advantageous tax-exempt financing has been available to manufacturing companies for decades, but, in recent years, the so-called “$10 million capital expenditure limitation” has limited the pool of manufacturers eligible for this financing. Congress has now raised the limit to $20 million beginning in 2007, which will make tax-exempt financing available to a greater number of manufacturing enterprises.
• Sustainability: An Idea Whose Time Has Come In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development issued the Brundtland Report, which added a new term to the environmental and business vernacular: “sustainability.” Sustainability was a concept that encouraged companies to operate in a way that demonstrates parallel care for the ecosystem and the people within. As a result, environmentalists cautioned business executives worldwide that, in order to survive, each organization needed to find ways to encourage business development that “meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”