Reader David recently posed the following question: I have a question for you that has bugged me for several years. From time to time, my company shares company-related information with a third party and, before doing so, enters into a confidentiality agreement (CA) [also known as a nondisclosure agreement—KAA] with the third party. Our CA has a term of five … Read More
It’s been a couple of months since I looked through recent opinions. It’s time for me to get back into the habit of doing so, because all sorts of interesting issues crop up. Consider Moore v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 30480 (N.D. Miss. Mar. 31, 2008). It bears on how you create the defined term Indemnified Party. … Read More
Avoid the prefixes bi- and semi- for purposes of references to time—they’re confusing. Bimonthly means “every two months” and semimonthly means “every half-month,” in other words “twice a month.” Biweekly and semiweekly reflect the same distinction. But biannual and semiannual both mean “occurring twice a year,” whereas biennial means “occurring once every two years.” So if someone is under an … Read More
Reader Steven Sholk of the Gibbons law firm alerted me to the February 6 decision by the Mississippi Supreme Court in Barbour v. Mississippi ex rel. Hood. Click here for a copy of the opinion. Steven had been alerted to this case by Rick Hasen of the Election Law blog. This case involves a squabble between the governor of Mississippi … Read More
A couple of days ago I received from a reader an email that included the following: I’ve got a question about the use of apostrophes in notice period provisions. I was rather surprised to see that section 8.96 of the MSCD includes apostrophes after the number of days/weeks/months in your example provisions. Shouldn’t such provisions simply refer to “days”, “weeks” … Read More
In my post on “termination for convenience” (click here) I said that in language providing for termination for any reason you can dispense with the phrase at any time, as that concept is implicit in termination for any reason. But the point can be made more broadly—the phrase at any time would seem to be extraneous whatever the context. In … Read More
A few weeks ago David Munn of Fair Isaac Corporation sent me the following email: Your email below reminded me of a pet peeve of mine that I don’t believe you’ve written about. You wrote “My class runs from 4:30PM to 6:30PM EST.” Your usage is correct because you are referring to a time in November. However, I’m seeing more … Read More
Reader Mike told me about IpVenture, Inc. v. Prostar Computer, Inc. (Fed. Cir. Sept. 28, 2007). I’m delighted that he did, because it’s yet another case that I can point to in making the argument that to control your drafting you need to clearly distinguish one category of contract language from another. IpVenture owns and licenses patents on inventions relating … Read More
I recently spoke with a large company that was preparing to drastically reduce the number of template contracts that its lawyers and business people had to work with. The process was going to involve close review of its current templates, of which there were dozens. That seemed like a daunting prospect. Around the same time, I first heard of Wordsensa … Read More
In the past few months I’ve been introduced to some impressive information-technology tools. (Click here, here, here, and here to see the related posts.) My introduction to Litera IDS has been particularly memorable, given its functionality, the need it aims to meet, the lack of any real competition, and the fact that I had no inkling that it existed. Deepak … Read More
