The 2014-15 Supreme Court term is getting into high gear, with oral arguments last week in Obergefell v. Hodges, dealing with gay marriage bans.  Decisions in Obergefell and several other high-profile cases have yet to be announced. FantasySCOTUS participants still have plenty of opportunity to get their selections in before the High Court issues many of its major decisions.

Josh Blackman, creator of FantasySCOTUS, gives us a “half-time” update on the current FantasySCOTUS season. 

Welcome to Mind Your Business, a podcast on corporate responsibility and inclusion, hosted by Patsy Doerr, global head of corporate responsibility and inclusion at Thomson Reuters

Today's guest is James White with the Diversity & Inclusion team for the Americas at Credit Suisse.

You can now speed through store checkout lanes just by waving your smartphone.  New mobile payment systems purport to be fast, convenient and secure.  Well, maybe not that last part.  Bob Benjy, an attorney with Frandzel Robins Bloom & Csato, who works with financial institutions, says mobile payment systems such as Apple Pay, Google Wallet and CurrentC may present potentially serious security loopholes.

Meanwhile, the IP & Science business of Thomson Reuters has just issued a patent analysis examining all facets of smartphone security and finds that smartphone manufacturers are dramatically stepping up their global patent filings related to protecting the privacy of cellular callers.

Integrated Corporate Reporting

Robert G. Eccles is a professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School.  He is one of the world’s leading experts on a global movement for companies to include new, value-related information in their regular reporting to regulators, investors and stakeholders. 

Prof. Eccles has written two books on the subject, One Report: Integrated Reporting for a Sustainable Strategy  and The Integrated Reporting Movement. He is a member of the International Integrated Reporting Council (http://www.integratedreporting.org/) and the founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) (www.sasb.org). Dr. Eccles is the co-founder, with Professor George Serafeim of Harvard Business School, of the Innovating for Sustainability social movement (https://www.facebook.com/innovatingforsustainability), and a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Sustainable Value Creation (https://www.conference-board.org).

Tim Nixon, managing editor of the Sustainability blog at Thomson Reuters interviewed Prof. Eccles on the benefits of integrated reporting and why corporations are moving in that direction.

March Madness, as always, is filed with upsets, great finishes and...trademark infringements?

Roger Boehle, partner at Foley, Bezek, Boehle & Curtis LLP discusses the potential pitfalls that await those who dare to try cashing in on March Madness.

A panel discussion at Legal Tech New York 2015 focused on the key issues attorneys, paralegals and litigation support staff should consider when deciding whether to insource or outsource e-discovery. While they may seem elementary, time, cost and complexity continue to be some of the greatest challenges e-discovery practitioners face today. The panel discussed some of the key elements to consider when deciding on an e-discovery solution. Discussion leader Ed Sohn of Thomson Reuters summarizes the panel discussion.

Panel speakers were:

·          Discussion Leader:
Edward Sohn
Global Director, Legal Managed Services
Thomson Reuters

·          Anthony J. Diana
Partner
Reed Smith

·          Glen McFarlane
Managing Director
JPMorgan Chase

·          Karin Scholz Jenson
Partner and National Co-Leader, E-Discovery Advocacy and Management Team
BakerHostetler

The IP market has traditionally centered on the United States. It remains a key jurisdiction, but change is in the air. With the forthcoming unitary patent system, the European Union may be about to become the epicenter of global patent litigation. The new court will mark a seismic shift in global patent litigation. Assuming all goes as planned, the major difference is that patent owners are going to have the ability to file a single lawsuit that will control almost the entire EU [aside from Spain].

The EU is a market size that is equivalent to the United States. Instead of going to each individual country's national courts, which is what you have to do today, you'll need only one lawsuit. A game changer for patent litigation and it isn't too soon for clients to start positioning and thinking about how to optimize for the split.

Morag MacDonald is an IP attorney with Bird & Bird, based in the UK.

The Equality Effect is a non-profit charity that uses international human rights law as a crowbar to pry open justice for women and girls around the world. Drawing on a team of feisty international lawyers, the equality effect supports its regional legal partners by initiating creative legal advocacy projects to achieve systemic change. In Kenya, The Equality Effect provided support for a constitutional claim against the government for failing to protect girls who had been raped; in May 2013, Kenya’s High Court agreed that the police failure to enforce existing rape laws, and police failure to protect them from rape, is a violation of domestic, regional, and human rights law. The work that led to this landmark ruling informs the equality effect’s newest project in Malawi that also seeks justice for victims of rape.

As three-time Amnesty International Media award-winner and author Sally Armstrong writes: “Once, in a very long while, maybe once in a lifetime, you get to witness a story that shifts the way an entire country or continent sees itself. The process of change is usually daring, certainly time-consuming, invariably costly, occasionally heart-breaking, and eventually an exercise so rewarding that it is the stuff of legends; this is the story of the equality effect.”

In his new book, THE TIME FOR JUSTICE: How the excesses of time have broken our civil justice system (Onward Publishing, June 2012) New York attorney Curto highlights the inequities that arise from the egregious excesses in time required to resolve legal disputes and provides targeted 'time fixes’ to correct the system.

We’ve got a great episode for you this month, with several segments highlighting the legal aspects of some recent news stories including the incident at the Heart Attack Grill as well as the latest on the lawsuits relating to the Italian cruise ship disaster.

Our interview segment is with Robert Brownstone, Technology and E-Discovery Counsel at Fenwick & West LLP where we learn more about what could happen to companies who illegally destroy electronic evidence.