U.S. Supreme Court

Member and Chair of Mintz’s ESG practice group, Jennifer B. Rubin and Associate Greer Clem co-authored an article published by Corporate Counsel covering the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege. The authors summarized, "An important and long-standing exception to the attorney-client privilege, the crime-fraud exception, bears examination in the post-Dobbs world. The crime-fraud exception divests attorney-client privilege of confidentiality when a lawyer’s advice facilitates a client’s crime...The crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege therefore merits attention for counsel, who should consider the potential areas of risk and some mechanisms to protect the confidentiality of these communications."

In previous posts (available here and here) we reported on some of the legal consequences from Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on employer-sponsored group health plan coverage of abortion-related travel benefits. In this post, Mintz attorneys Alden Bianchi, Greer Clem, and Jen Rubin address the larger concern related to the legality of these benefits in the face of a burgeoning number of states seeking to extend their extra-territorial reach to bar or even criminalize individuals who provide abortion-related travel. 

In this second of our two-part blog series on protecting health information post Roe, we discuss legal and practical strategies that health care providers can take to protect the information of their patients. State laws that restrict or criminalize abortions will require significant amounts of health information to enforce, putting new pressure on health care providers caught in the middle of  competing obligations to their patients and to regulatory and law enforcement authorities making lawful requests for this information.

Unintended downstream consequences are likely to abound in the wake of the June 24, 2022 Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v. Wade, as Mintz attorneys have addressed in other contexts. Those looking ahead have raised concerns about women’s continued access to the wide array of birth control options that have been approved for use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This post provides a brief historical background on how OTC birth control pills have been regulated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and reviews the FDA's Additional Conditions for Nonprescription Use (ACNU) Proposed Rule.

Dobbs impacts employer-sponsored group health plan coverage for abortion services in states where abortion is, or becomes, illegal, and abortion-related travel benefits.  While our earlier post focused on coverage of abortion and abortion-related travel services under a group health plan, and related ERISA preemption considerations, in this post Mintz attorneys Alden Bianchi, Michelle Capezza and Patricia Moran examine other approaches available to employers that seek to make these benefits available, such as HRAs, health FSAs, excepted benefit EAPs and HSAs.

 

The Dobbs decision have left consumers, providers and insurers with questions on how it  will impact abortion services under health plans. To address this issue, Mintz Employment attorney Marc Aspis discuss the new guidance issued by the Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") and the HHS Office for Civil Rights regarding access and coverage of reproductive health care and patient privacy and how to incorporate the new guidance into employer group health plans.

Much has been written about how existing privacy laws such as HIPAA are unhelpful to women in the wake of Dobbs vs. Jackon Women's Health Organization ruling. In the first of this two-part blog post series, the Mintz team breaks down the legal rights and practical strategies that women can use to protect their own information.

With the Supreme Court’s decision reversing Roe v. Wade, employers may find themselves navigating complex benefits and tax-related issues. Our Employment, Labor & Benefits team examines what employers will confront if they seek to amend group health plans, or adopt new plans, programs or arrangements, in an effort to facilitate employee reproductive choice in a post-Roe v. Wade environment.

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied TCL Communication’s certiorari petition, without comment, appealing the Federal Circuit’s ruling that the essentiality of a patent claim is a question for the jury rather than judges to resolve during claim construction.  The denial of cert by the Supreme Court cements the Federal Circuit ruling which made proving infringement of standard essential patents easier by allowing reliance on the standard to show such infringement. 

On Monday, in a highly-anticipated decision, a fractured Supreme Court issued its opinion in Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew, striking a portion of the America Invents Act (AIA) as unconstitutional—but providing an effectively toothless remedy.

On January 8, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case calling for it to abolish or limit the doctrine of assignor estoppel. See Minerva Surgical, Inc. v. Hologic, Inc., et al., No. 20-440, 2021 WL 77248 (U.S. Jan. 8, 2021). Mintz previously discussed the Federal Circuit’s decision, which found assignor estoppel to be applicable.

As we reported in our July 7, 2020 blog post on the USPTO v. Booking.com B.V decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a proposed mark consisting of the combination of a generic term and a generic top-level domain, like “.com,” is not automatically generic and can be protected as a trademark under certain circumstances.

On October 13, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court granted three petitions for writ of certiorari related to Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew addressing two issues that will determine the fate of PTAB judges and decisions.

In a landmark decision, United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V., the Supreme Court of the United States, by an 8-1 vote, affirmed the lower court’s determination that Booking.com could register BOOKING.COM as a trademark. 

On Friday, May 1, 2020, Chief Administrative Patent Judge Scott R. Boalick of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) paused all activity in the significant number of PTAB cases remanded to it from the Federal Circuit under Arthrex (discussed here). 

On April 27, 2020, the Supreme Court held that annotations to legislative text, even if created by a private contracted party, are not copyrightable materials under 17 U.S.C. §101. Invoking the government edicts doctrine, the Court made explicit the notion that all members of government involved in lawmaking, including state legislators, are barred from being “authors” for purposes of copyright protection.

In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court held that a trademark owner need not prove willful infringement in order to seek lost profits from a trademark infringer. The case, Romag Fasteners Inc. v. Fossil Inc. et al., case number 18-1233, involved a long running trademark infringement dispute between the parties.

On Monday, in Thryv, Inc. v. Click-to-Cal Technologies, the Supreme Court held that § 315(b) time-bar determinations are not subject to judicial review. In this 7-2 decision penned by Justice Ginsburg, with Justices Gorsuch and Sotomayor dissenting, the Court determined that time-bar determinations are unreviewable because they are “closely tied” to the Director’s decision to institute an inter partes review (IPR).

Bringing positive news for employers and a welcome distraction from the COVID-19 crisis, the United States Supreme Court recently held that for claims of racial discrimination under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (“Section 1981”), plaintiffs are obligated to meet the more stringent “but-for” causation standard at every stage of a lawsuit.