Besides the comment above this about the shares themselves being income, the other thing to be wary of is whether the firm is set up as an S-corp (or LLC). In these firms, all income or loss is passed through to the shareholders for tax purposes. So the taxable income of a 10% owner increases by 10% of the firms taxable profits. This avoids the situation in which a dividend is taxed as part of the corporate profit and, once distributed as dividends, taxed as personal income of the shareholder.
The catch is that there's no requirement that the firm distribute those profits. Some, but by no means all, S-corps are set up to require distribution of a certain percentage of taxable profit to allow shareholders to pay this tax. Owning stock in a firm not set up this way carries a real risk of having to pay taxes on profits one hasn't received. Therefore, a one should always consult a lawyer before acquiring such shares.
Breyer wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. He agreed that the district court failed to follow the law when it imposed the two restrictions at issue on the Navy's sonar testing pending completion of the environmental impact statement. In this portion of his opinion, he agreed with the Navy. In the second part of his opinion, he disagreed that the proper response was to get rid of the two conditions.
Stevens concurred in the first part of Breyer's decision and did not join the second part. In other words, he concurred in the judgment of the Court. In total, seven justices agreed with the Navy's position that the district court's order was not in accord with the law.
The law regarding work for hire is complex. A work cannot be a work for hire in a contract situation (as opposed to regular employment) unless the work meets strict criteria.
Moreover, merely specifying that the buyer owns the copyright in the original contract may not be enough. A separate assignment executed on delivery might be necessary, depending on a lot of factors.
Be careful here. Simply saying "work for hire" in the contract does not necessarily make it so. Find a good form agreement recommended by a lawyer or a lawyer to draft a contract that includes an express IP assignment as well as work for hire provisions.
Whether it's wrong and if the punishment was extremely excessive is up to debate. Premeditated murder, manslaughter by negligence, and Murder in the name of self defense can warrant totally different outcomes. It looks to me in this case intent is being totally ignored.
Actually, what's being ignored is motive, not intent. Motive is the reason someone commits a particular act. Intent means conscious objective or purpose to commit the act.
He intended to break into a network. His purported motive for doing so was to find vulnerabilities and report them to the sysadmin. If he had been running a program designed to search for files and accidentally accessed "secure" files, he would lack the intent to commit the act.
Similarly, a person who intentionally kills someone (without legal justification) commits a different offense than someone who negligently kills someone. The motives involved aren't relevant to which crime was committed. For example, if someone intentionally kills the man who had raped his dog and killed his sister, we might think better of him than someone who negligently ran over a kid because he had to get to a movie on time. But the former committed murder (or voluntary manslaughter, depending) while the latter committed negligent homicide.
Of course, motive would be factored into sentencing. It might be factored into decisions to prosecute (lesser charge or none at all). But motive isn't an element of most crimes and doesn't affect the legal question of whether someone committed most crimes.
How will the Green Party, whose ticket contains two women, get any increase from people avoiding the Republican ticket because they won't vote for a woman?
There are certain provisions in contracts that are disfavored at law. This usually includes limitations on liability, disclaimers of implied warranties, and the like - essentially, items that take away rights that the purchaser (usually) would have absent the contractual language. Such provisions are usually construed strictly against the beneficiary. One of the legal arguments available to someone trying, for example, to sue in the face of a liability waiver is that it fails to give "clear notice" of the nature of the waiver. That the waiver is buried in a long document is sometimes a successful argument that the contract failed to give clear notice.
It's less important to this argument that the text be easier to read than that it is called out as being important by being different and "bigger." In general, a capitalized section of an otherwise mixed case agreement is a signal that you are about to waive a legal right.
That doesn't work on a significant percentage of pre-recorded calls I get - the bastards hang on to my line even after I hang up. That's already illegal, of course, but nothing ever seems to happen to them.
(i) A party must produce documents as they are kept in the usual course of business or must organize and label them to correspond to the categories in the request;
(ii) If a request does not specify a form for producing electronically stored information, a party must produce it in a form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form or forms; and
(iii) A party need not produce the same electronically stored information in more than one form.
Judges hate discovery games and will often make people who play tricks pay.
If Glider is not on the machine, WoW will load and run correctly. Therefore, Glider's copying of the program to RAM is not essential to utilize the WoW software.
Now Rivera must convince potential investors that his trade secret - 21 years and $31 million dollars in the making - isn't just a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
If his claims are true, this will be a trivial task. The fact that he keeps talking about how difficult it will be is telling.
It sounds to me like the judge is essentially saying that Google/YouTube didn't adequately demonstrate that privacy is being violated for such an order. Actually, from what I read I was fairly impressed with what the judge had to say and the rulings on some of the other issues involved (Viacom didn't get nearly as much as they were hoping for- source code), but it sounds like Google/YouTube did not do a very good job of demonstrating the privacy concerns.
I wish I had mod points right now. While I think the job very probably misevaluated the facts, he did so based on Google's prior statements that IP addresses are not enough to personally identify the users. There's a strong implication that that the judge would have decided differently had a showing been made that the log would allow personal identification of the viewers.
What this means is that, even though he seems to have made improper conclusions of fact, the judge is applying a rule of law that does take personal privacy into account. If someone could produce proper evidence that the log does allow personal identification, the judge might change his mind. Let's hope someone will rise to the challenge.
The court did not find that "the Administration" lacked "substantial independent authority." It found that the White House Office of Administration , which provides "financial management and information technology support, human resources management, library and research assistance, facilities management, procurement, printing and graphics support, security, and mail and messenger operations" to the Executive Office of the President, lacked substantial independent authority.
IANAL, but I'm still surprised to hear that the FOIA only applies to government offices which have "substantial independent authority."
From everything I've heard, it applies to all government agencies.
It does not apply to all government entities. The opinion in this case explains the relevant standards:
In 1974, Congress amended the FOIA definition of agency to cover any "establishment in the executive branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President), or any independent regulatory agency." 5 U.S.C. 552(f). This definition "was not, however, meant to cover 'the President's immediate personal staff or units in the Executive Office whose sole function is to advise and assist the President.'" Armstrong, 90 F.3d at 558 (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 93-1380, at 14 (1974) (Conf. Rep.)). Indeed, Congress intended to codify the D.C. Circuit's decision in Soucie. Id. ("That the Congress intended to codify Soucie is clear enough.") (citing Meyer v. Bush, 981 F.2d 1288, 1291 (D.C. Cir. 1993)). Soucie, however, offers two possible tests for determining whether an EOP component is an agency subject to the FOIA: (1) whether the entity exercises "substantial independent authority," and (2) whether the entity's "sole function is to advise and assist the President." Soucie, 448 F.2d at 1073, 1075; see also Armstrong, 90 F.3d at 558. Following the 1974 Amendments to the FOIA, as discussed in greater detail below, the D.C. Circuit considered these two factors in determining whether a variety of EOP components were agencies subject to the FOIA.
In 1993, the D.C. Circuit issued its opinion in Meyer v. Bush, 981 F.2d 1288, which "managed to harmonize" the two Soucie criteria "by using a three-factor test to determine the status under FOIA of a unit in the Executive Office of the President." Armstrong, 90 F.3d at 558. Specifically, the Meyer court determined that, in "apply[ing] Soucie to those who help the President supervise others in the executive branch . . . it is necessary to focus on three interrelated factors . . . [(1)] how close operationally the group is to the President, [(2)] what the nature of its delegation from the President is, and [(3)] whether it has a self-contained structure." 981 F.2d at 1293.
In short, it is well-settled law that some executive entities are not covered by FOIA, and there is significant precedent for making the determination. That's not to say the judge was right or wrong, just that "FOIA applies to all agencies" is not the proper mode of criticism.
So. Based on that, how does one compress video using a single chip (the patent has absolutely NOTHING about its implementation)?
The claims generally do not contain information that tells someone how to use the invention. Instead, the patent specification must include disclosure sufficient to allow a person with ordinary skill in the relevant art to make and use the invention without undue experimentation. If known, the best mode of implementing the invention must be disclosed in the application. Neither type of disclosure typically occurs within the claims.
In the patent application you linked, there is a section called "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS" that contains extensive instructions on implementing the invention. It includes pseudocode, numerous diagrams, and other technical data. Whether it is enough to allow someone in the field to compress video using a single chip, I can't say. But it's significantly more detail than the quoted portion of the claims in the post above.
It's very possible that large numbers of patents are gaining approval without containing sufficient disclosure. But the evidence of that does not exist in the claims of those patents, and arguments based on the claims themselves that don't even acknowledge the disclosure of the preferred embodiments hinder the cause of patent reform.
Just curious, what other licensed profession is fingerprinted and compared to a national criminal database annually? Doctors? Childcare Providers? Lawyers?
The following is state dependent, but several states (and maybe all) require fingerprints for lawyers, doctors, liquor licenses, and child care providers. The requirement for the first three is at least two decades old.
TFA is mistaken about whether the use of Apple's old logo on busses and vans is a "clear case of trademark infringement." The essence of trademark infringement is the likelihood of consumer confusion. It's possible to make the case that tourists in Vietnam would likely think Apple Computer (as it was called then) was running van and bus lines in Vietnam, but it's hardly "clear."
It is clearly copyright infringement. It also might be trademark dilution, but that's a far harder case to make than trademark infringement (meaning it's not really "clear"), and it's not widely enforced outside the U.S.
From what I know the affirmative defense of having a trading plan, according to 10b5-1(c)(1)(i) requires that the person did not exercise any influence on "whether to effect purchases or sales." In other words, putting a plan into writing and then pulling out based on inside information is illegal.
True. The problem is that, in the absence of such a plan, the mere possession of insider information before a trade can lead to liability. Once this defense comes into play, mere possession of such information is not enough to support conviction.
Without a plan, an executive can testify all he wants that he didn't take insider information into account - he's still liable as long as the government proves he had the information. With a plan, that testimony establishes an affirmative defense. Such a defense can be attacked in several ways, including by showing a convenient pattern of cancellations. It's a big enough hole to establish reasonable doubt in most criminal cases. In civil cases, it would be easier for the government to make its case, but still more difficult than if cancellation of such a plan were itself a liability-triggering event.
May 2001 - that would be four months after George Bush, Jr., went into the White House.
Ah, the great tragedy of Slashdot-the slaying of a beautiful political screed by an ugly fact. (With apologies to Thomas Huxley.)
The first SEC commissioner appointed by Bush to the SEC was Harvey Pitt on August 3, 2001 - more than 2 months AFTER this ruling issued. Every SEC commissioner at the time this decision issued was appointed by Clinton. Even if lower-level Bush appointees were involved in drafting the answer, the commissioners could have stopped this from issuing.
They didn't, most likely because they couldn't. The Supreme Court decision at the root of the reasoning has been in place since 1975. This must be corrected legislatively, either by removing the predefined plan affirmative defense entirely or, more likely, by making the revocation of such a plan an event to which liability can attach.
The SEC was very aware of this situation. They explicitly OKed this activity in May 2001:
After the written trading plan described in Q&A 11(a) has been in effect for several months, the person terminates the selling plan by calling the broker and canceling the limit order.
(a) Does the act of terminating a plan while aware of material nonpublic information result in liability under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5?
No. Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 apply "in connection with the purchase or sale of any security." Thus, a purchase or sale of a security must be present for liability to attach. See Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723 (1975).
Slashdot Mirror
Besides the comment above this about the shares themselves being income, the other thing to be wary of is whether the firm is set up as an S-corp (or LLC). In these firms, all income or loss is passed through to the shareholders for tax purposes. So the taxable income of a 10% owner increases by 10% of the firms taxable profits. This avoids the situation in which a dividend is taxed as part of the corporate profit and, once distributed as dividends, taxed as personal income of the shareholder.
The catch is that there's no requirement that the firm distribute those profits. Some, but by no means all, S-corps are set up to require distribution of a certain percentage of taxable profit to allow shareholders to pay this tax. Owning stock in a firm not set up this way carries a real risk of having to pay taxes on profits one hasn't received. Therefore, a one should always consult a lawyer before acquiring such shares.
Breyer wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. He agreed that the district court failed to follow the law when it imposed the two restrictions at issue on the Navy's sonar testing pending completion of the environmental impact statement. In this portion of his opinion, he agreed with the Navy. In the second part of his opinion, he disagreed that the proper response was to get rid of the two conditions.
Stevens concurred in the first part of Breyer's decision and did not join the second part. In other words, he concurred in the judgment of the Court. In total, seven justices agreed with the Navy's position that the district court's order was not in accord with the law.
The law regarding work for hire is complex. A work cannot be a work for hire in a contract situation (as opposed to regular employment) unless the work meets strict criteria. Moreover, merely specifying that the buyer owns the copyright in the original contract may not be enough. A separate assignment executed on delivery might be necessary, depending on a lot of factors.
Be careful here. Simply saying "work for hire" in the contract does not necessarily make it so. Find a good form agreement recommended by a lawyer or a lawyer to draft a contract that includes an express IP assignment as well as work for hire provisions.
In fact, EVERY web site that is not empty has copyrighted material on it. Copyright comes into being at the time of creation.
Whether it's wrong and if the punishment was extremely excessive is up to debate. Premeditated murder, manslaughter by negligence, and Murder in the name of self defense can warrant totally different outcomes. It looks to me in this case intent is being totally ignored.
Actually, what's being ignored is motive, not intent. Motive is the reason someone commits a particular act. Intent means conscious objective or purpose to commit the act.
He intended to break into a network. His purported motive for doing so was to find vulnerabilities and report them to the sysadmin. If he had been running a program designed to search for files and accidentally accessed "secure" files, he would lack the intent to commit the act.
Similarly, a person who intentionally kills someone (without legal justification) commits a different offense than someone who negligently kills someone. The motives involved aren't relevant to which crime was committed. For example, if someone intentionally kills the man who had raped his dog and killed his sister, we might think better of him than someone who negligently ran over a kid because he had to get to a movie on time. But the former committed murder (or voluntary manslaughter, depending) while the latter committed negligent homicide.
Of course, motive would be factored into sentencing. It might be factored into decisions to prosecute (lesser charge or none at all). But motive isn't an element of most crimes and doesn't affect the legal question of whether someone committed most crimes.
How will the Green Party, whose ticket contains two women, get any increase from people avoiding the Republican ticket because they won't vote for a woman?
There are certain provisions in contracts that are disfavored at law. This usually includes limitations on liability, disclaimers of implied warranties, and the like - essentially, items that take away rights that the purchaser (usually) would have absent the contractual language. Such provisions are usually construed strictly against the beneficiary. One of the legal arguments available to someone trying, for example, to sue in the face of a liability waiver is that it fails to give "clear notice" of the nature of the waiver. That the waiver is buried in a long document is sometimes a successful argument that the contract failed to give clear notice.
It's less important to this argument that the text be easier to read than that it is called out as being important by being different and "bigger." In general, a capitalized section of an otherwise mixed case agreement is a signal that you are about to waive a legal right.
That doesn't work on a significant percentage of pre-recorded calls I get - the bastards hang on to my line even after I hang up. That's already illegal, of course, but nothing ever seems to happen to them.
I would send over all the data on paper- via fax machine. Good way to get slapped with enormous sanctions. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2)(E) states:
(i) A party must produce documents as they are kept in the usual course of business or must organize and label them to correspond to the categories in the request; (ii) If a request does not specify a form for producing electronically stored information, a party must produce it in a form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form or forms; and (iii) A party need not produce the same electronically stored information in more than one form.
Judges hate discovery games and will often make people who play tricks pay.
If Glider is not on the machine, WoW will load and run correctly. Therefore, Glider's copying of the program to RAM is not essential to utilize the WoW software.
I guess their opposition to immigration isn't a recent development.
From TFA:
Now Rivera must convince potential investors that his trade secret - 21 years and $31 million dollars in the making - isn't just a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
If his claims are true, this will be a trivial task. The fact that he keeps talking about how difficult it will be is telling.
It sounds to me like the judge is essentially saying that Google/YouTube didn't adequately demonstrate that privacy is being violated for such an order. Actually, from what I read I was fairly impressed with what the judge had to say and the rulings on some of the other issues involved (Viacom didn't get nearly as much as they were hoping for- source code), but it sounds like Google/YouTube did not do a very good job of demonstrating the privacy concerns.
I wish I had mod points right now. While I think the job very probably misevaluated the facts, he did so based on Google's prior statements that IP addresses are not enough to personally identify the users. There's a strong implication that that the judge would have decided differently had a showing been made that the log would allow personal identification of the viewers.
What this means is that, even though he seems to have made improper conclusions of fact, the judge is applying a rule of law that does take personal privacy into account. If someone could produce proper evidence that the log does allow personal identification, the judge might change his mind. Let's hope someone will rise to the challenge.
I trust you, but "I smacked a man with a keyboard in Reno, just to watch him die" doesn't have the same ring to it.
Really? Perhaps you can explain why she "ruled that the U.S. Archivist's reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law".
The court did not find that "the Administration" lacked "substantial independent authority." It found that the White House Office of Administration , which provides "financial management and information technology support, human resources management, library and research assistance, facilities management, procurement, printing and graphics support, security, and mail and messenger operations" to the Executive Office of the President, lacked substantial independent authority.
It does not apply to all government entities. The opinion in this case explains the relevant standards:
In 1974, Congress amended the FOIA definition of agency to cover any "establishment in the executive branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President), or any independent regulatory agency." 5 U.S.C. 552(f). This definition "was not, however, meant to cover 'the President's immediate personal staff or units in the Executive Office whose sole function is to advise and assist the President.'" Armstrong, 90 F.3d at 558 (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 93-1380, at 14 (1974) (Conf. Rep.)). Indeed, Congress intended to codify the D.C. Circuit's decision in Soucie. Id. ("That the Congress intended to codify Soucie is clear enough.") (citing Meyer v. Bush, 981 F.2d 1288, 1291 (D.C. Cir. 1993)). Soucie, however, offers two possible tests for determining whether an EOP component is an agency subject to the FOIA: (1) whether the entity exercises "substantial independent authority," and (2) whether the entity's "sole function is to advise and assist the President." Soucie, 448 F.2d at 1073, 1075; see also Armstrong, 90 F.3d at 558. Following the 1974 Amendments to the FOIA, as discussed in greater detail below, the D.C. Circuit considered these two factors in determining whether a variety of EOP components were agencies subject to the FOIA.
In 1993, the D.C. Circuit issued its opinion in Meyer v. Bush, 981 F.2d 1288, which "managed to harmonize" the two Soucie criteria "by using a three-factor test to determine the status under FOIA of a unit in the Executive Office of the President." Armstrong, 90 F.3d at 558. Specifically, the Meyer court determined that, in "apply[ing] Soucie to those who help the President supervise others in the executive branch . . . it is necessary to focus on three interrelated factors . . . [(1)] how close operationally the group is to the President, [(2)] what the nature of its delegation from the President is, and [(3)] whether it has a self-contained structure." 981 F.2d at 1293.
In short, it is well-settled law that some executive entities are not covered by FOIA, and there is significant precedent for making the determination. That's not to say the judge was right or wrong, just that "FOIA applies to all agencies" is not the proper mode of criticism.
The answer to this question is right there in your post: "you wouldn't have to go buy a new cable every time you got a new phone."
The claims generally do not contain information that tells someone how to use the invention. Instead, the patent specification must include disclosure sufficient to allow a person with ordinary skill in the relevant art to make and use the invention without undue experimentation. If known, the best mode of implementing the invention must be disclosed in the application. Neither type of disclosure typically occurs within the claims.
In the patent application you linked, there is a section called "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS" that contains extensive instructions on implementing the invention. It includes pseudocode, numerous diagrams, and other technical data. Whether it is enough to allow someone in the field to compress video using a single chip, I can't say. But it's significantly more detail than the quoted portion of the claims in the post above.
It's very possible that large numbers of patents are gaining approval without containing sufficient disclosure. But the evidence of that does not exist in the claims of those patents, and arguments based on the claims themselves that don't even acknowledge the disclosure of the preferred embodiments hinder the cause of patent reform.
The following is state dependent, but several states (and maybe all) require fingerprints for lawyers, doctors, liquor licenses, and child care providers. The requirement for the first three is at least two decades old.
TFA is mistaken about whether the use of Apple's old logo on busses and vans is a "clear case of trademark infringement." The essence of trademark infringement is the likelihood of consumer confusion. It's possible to make the case that tourists in Vietnam would likely think Apple Computer (as it was called then) was running van and bus lines in Vietnam, but it's hardly "clear."
It is clearly copyright infringement. It also might be trademark dilution, but that's a far harder case to make than trademark infringement (meaning it's not really "clear"), and it's not widely enforced outside the U.S.
True. The problem is that, in the absence of such a plan, the mere possession of insider information before a trade can lead to liability. Once this defense comes into play, mere possession of such information is not enough to support conviction.
Without a plan, an executive can testify all he wants that he didn't take insider information into account - he's still liable as long as the government proves he had the information. With a plan, that testimony establishes an affirmative defense. Such a defense can be attacked in several ways, including by showing a convenient pattern of cancellations. It's a big enough hole to establish reasonable doubt in most criminal cases. In civil cases, it would be easier for the government to make its case, but still more difficult than if cancellation of such a plan were itself a liability-triggering event.
Ah, the great tragedy of Slashdot-the slaying of a beautiful political screed by an ugly fact. (With apologies to Thomas Huxley.)
The first SEC commissioner appointed by Bush to the SEC was Harvey Pitt on August 3, 2001 - more than 2 months AFTER this ruling issued. Every SEC commissioner at the time this decision issued was appointed by Clinton. Even if lower-level Bush appointees were involved in drafting the answer, the commissioners could have stopped this from issuing.
They didn't, most likely because they couldn't. The Supreme Court decision at the root of the reasoning has been in place since 1975. This must be corrected legislatively, either by removing the predefined plan affirmative defense entirely or, more likely, by making the revocation of such a plan an event to which liability can attach.
(a) Does the act of terminating a plan while aware of material nonpublic information result in liability under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5?
No. Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 apply "in connection with the purchase or sale of any security." Thus, a purchase or sale of a security must be present for liability to attach. See Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723 (1975).