How long does a copyright owner have to bring suit for copyright infringement? The answer is three years from the date of the last infringement, regardless of when the very first infringement occurred. Copyright law follows the “separate-accrual rule,” which provides for a new three-year statute of limitations each time an infringement occurs. While the three-year look back period allows copyright owners to maintain actions years or decades after the initial infringement occurs (assuming subsequent…

Trade secrets, amorphously defined as any confidential business information which gives an enterprise a competitive edge, have not had much federal protection as compared to other intellectual property vehicles such as copyrights, trademarks and patents. Traditionally, trade secret misappropriation cases have been litigated in state court using state law. Even though the majority of states have adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”), there are still notable differences among the various version of the UTSA…

As a general rule a party must exhaust its administrative remedies before it can invoke the jurisdiction of the courts. However, the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits have all held that exhaustion is not a prerequisite to suits alleging statutory ERISA violations.

Before Congress enacted the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act of 1980 ("MPPAA"), "many employers were withdrawing from multiemployer plans because they could avoid withdrawal liability if the plan survived for five years after the date of their withdrawal," and Congress was concerned " 'that ERISA did not adequately protect multiemployer pension plans from the adverse consequences that result when individual employers terminate their participation or withdraw.' "

ERISA section 1054(g)(1), provides in relevant part: "The accrued benefit of a participant under a plan may not be decreased by an amendment of the plan ...." The anti-cutback rule is a "crucial" aspect of ERISA's protection of pension benefits. In light of the importance of the anti-cutback rule and in order to avoid work-arounds that curtail accrued benefits by means other than formal plan amendments, courts have deemed actions to be violative of the anti-cutback rule even when there had not been a formal amendment of a pension plan.

Each plan subject to minimum-funding requirements must maintain a minimum-funding standard account and meet a minimum-funding standard. A funding standard account consists of charges for normal costs, amortization costs and funding deficiencies, offset by credits for amounts contributed by the employer, amortization gains, waived funding deficiencies, and the excess of any debit balance in the funding standard account over any debit balance in the alternative minimum standard account, if any.