If you use a slogan or a logo that identifies your company to your customers, you should protect your rights to that slogan or logo. If you don’t have the thousands of dollars that a federal trademark registration might require, the Tennessee Trademark Act (TTMA) might provide you with the protection you need at a cost you can ...
Today begins the sixty-day period when employers can submit comments about the DOL’s proposed rule increasing the salary requirements for exempt employees. The DOL proposes that the minimum salary requirements be raised from $455 per week or $23,660 a year to $970 a week or $50,440 a year. In order to qualify for the highly ...
On May 27, the EPA finalized the “Clean Water Rule” which defines the scope of waters protected by the Clean Water Act. The rule is intended to clarify and implement Supreme Court decisions interpreting the reach of Clean Water Act provisions controlled by the phrase “waters of the United States.”
Those decisions have ...
On April 17, 2015, the EPA published a final rule in the Federal Register regulating the disposal of coal combustion residuals (CCRs) as solid waste under subtitle D of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The EPA established national minimum criteria for existing and new CCR landfills, existing and new CCR ...
On Tuesday, June 30, 2015, in an attempt to “modernize and streamline” the regulations on exemptions from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (“FLSA”) minimum wage and overtime pay requirements, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM)” which focuses primarily on increasing ...
On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), an Obama administration effort to limit toxic emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) from Electric Generating Units (EGUs). In a 5-4 decision under the name Michigan v. EPA, the Court held the EPA ...
In Hisle, et al. v. Correctcare – Integrated Health, Inc., Ky. App. (June 12, 2015), the Kentucky Court of Appeals addressed the issue of what test applies when employees claim to have missed meal breaks. Plaintiffs, who were nurses and medication aids employed at a prison, sued under the Kentucky wage and hour laws alleging ...
Rarely has such a short word or phrase influenced patent claims to such a degree as the phrase, “means for.” This phrase sits at the intersection of function (what an invention accomplishes) and structure (the materials for accomplishing it). 35 U.S.C. § 112, para. 6 is the basis for its use in patent claims:
An element in a claim ...
Earlier today, in Obergefell v. Hodges, No. 14-556, the U.S. Supreme Court declared, in a 5-4 ruling, that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the United States. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, stated that “laws excluding same-sex couples from the marriage right impose stigma and injury ...
In less than thirty years, the Internet has evolved from a small consortium of military and educational research offices into a world-wide public system for communication, information-sharing, and business with millions of content providers such as Netflix and CBS News, thousands of connection service providers ...