No Sure Thing! Ninth Circuit questions whether litigation funding advances made against a portfolio of cases runs afoul of New York usury laws. On June 11, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit certified a question for the New York Court of Appeals: whether a litigation financing agreement qualified as a “loan”…

Rimon Partner Mark Lee drafted the briefing and was the architect of the legal strategy that resulted in a ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the recoverability of legal fees in a declaratory relief action to establish copyright infringement liability and was covered in Bloomberg Law and Law.com The Recorder. In what it called an issue…

In the recently decided case of Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, the Ninth Circuit upheld a 2004 district court’s decision to certify a class that could potentially consist of 1.5 million women employed by Wal-Mart since 1997. Through this gender discrimination class action, the employees seek back pay, declaratory relief, and injunctive relief. The plaintiffs allege that…

In order to initiate an infringement action in federal court, the Copyright Act requires the litigating party to hold a copyright registration. While the circuits are split on what constitutes a copyright registration, the Ninth Circuit recently joined the Fifth and Seventh Circuits in Cosmetic Ideas v. IAC in holding that anapplication for copyright registration suffices for a…