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FCPA’s Ever-Expanding Reach Goes Private

Client Alert | 1 min read | 12.19.07

As U.S. regulators continue to explore new, more aggressive ways to prosecute foreign bribery under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Department of Justice has sent a clear warning that prosecution is not reserved for publicly traded companies on U.S. exchanges or their executives.


The DOJ announced yesterday that it had arrested a Los Angeles film executive and his wife on a criminal complaint. DOJ alleges that the couple paid more than $1.7 million in bribes to a Thai tourism official to obtain contracts worth approximately $10 million for their private company to run an international film festival in Bangkok. The complaint further alleges that the couple attempted to conceal the bribes by using multiple business entities and making “commission” payments through intermediaries and foreign bank accounts.


While the vast majority of FCPA individual prosecutions have focused on executives at publicly traded companies, by charging this case, the DOJ has reiterated that private individuals and companies are also within the crosshairs of FCPA enforcement.




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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25

Defining Claim Terms by Implication: Lexicography Lessons from Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation

Claim construction is a key stage of most patent litigations, where the court must decide the meaning of any disputed terms in the patent claims.  Generally, claim terms are given their plain and ordinary meaning except under two circumstances: (1) when the patentee acts as its own lexicographer and sets out a definition for the term; and (2) when the patentee disavows the full scope of the term either in the specification or during prosecution.  Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012).  The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp. highlights that patentees can act as their own lexicographers through consistent, interchangeable usage of terms across the specification, effectively defining terms by implication....

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