No Preferential T&C's Mods Allowed for Commercial Item Buys
Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 06.20.11
In Diebold, Inc. (June 2, 2011), GAO sustained a protest when the Comptroller of the Currency had substituted new terms and conditions beneficial to the awardee into a commercial items contract that were not part of the underlying solicitation. While GAO agreed that FAR § 12.302(a) gives an agency discretion to tailor the terms of FAR Clause 52.212-4 to the market practices and conditions for a particular commercial item acquisition, it instructed that all offerors must compete on a common basis against the agency's true needs and so "tailoring" of the terms must occur prior to the submission of final proposals.
Contacts
Insights
Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25
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.
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.14.25
Microplastics Update: Regulatory and Litigation Developments in 2025
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.13.25
