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Bryan Sullivan and Business Forward Host Luncheon with Andrew Byrnes, Chief of Staff, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Category: Events | Friday, January 24th, 2014 | Comments Off on Bryan Sullivan and Business Forward Host Luncheon with Andrew Byrnes, Chief of Staff, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Bryan Sullivan, in conjunction with Business Forward held a White House Business Council luncheon to discuss key intellectual property (IP) policy priorities of the Obama Administration’s second term innovation agenda. Andrew Byrnes, Chief of Staff, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, outlined how reforms to our nation’s IP system can help fuel 21st century breakthroughs and move new technologies to the market place faster, and accelerate economic growth across sectors.
Andrew Byrnes is the Chief of Staff for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Serving as the Under Secretary’s principal advisor, the Chief of Staff helps to oversee the budget, operations and public engagement functions of the agency in addition to the day-to-day management of the policy coordination process with the White House, Department of Commerce and other agencies.
About Business Forward
With the help of more than 50 of the world’s most respected companies, Business Forward is making it easier for tens of thousands of business leaders from across America to advise Washington on how to create jobs and accelerate our economic recovery. Together, we have organized hundreds of local briefings with more than 400 senior Administration officials, Members of Congress, mayors and governors. In 2012, we also brought more than 2,000 business leaders to the White House to brief the President’s economic advisors. Business leaders who have participated in our briefings have seen their suggestions implemented in the Affordable Care Act, the Jobs Act, three trade agreements and every one of the President’s budgets. Many have also shared their recommendations with their representatives in Congress and through op-eds and interviews with local media. Ninety-eight out of 100 business leaders who have participated in a Business Forward briefing would be interested in participating in another one.
RSVPs Included:
- Jane Albrecht, Founder, Global Entertainment Network
- Karen Bass, US House of Representatives
- Brian Berliner, Partner, O’Melveny & Myers LLP
- Mark Bloomberg, Partner, Zuber Lawler & Del Duca
- Savalas Colbert, Owner, PonyEngine
- Sarah Dusseault, Policy Advisor to Bobby Shriver, Shriver campaign
- Michael Gilmore, Finance, Gilmore Strategies
- Stephen Graham, Principal, CEO Advisor
- Karen Huoth, Litigation & Patent Counsel, Hulu
- Andrew Lachman, President, Sunset Capital Ventures LLC
- Molly Lavik, Founder, Mentor InSight
- Nancy McCullough, Principal & Managing Attorney, Law Offices of Nancy L. McCullough
- Jonathan Melber, Content Acquisition Business Affairs, Hulu
- Robert Muller, Partner, Cypress, LLP
- Douglas Olin, CEO, Olin Associates
- Yolanda “Cookie” Parker
- Emanuel Pleitez, Commissioner, L.A. Fire and Police Pensions
- Lance Pritikin, Patent Attorney, Law Offices of Lance M. Pritikin
- Lorelei Ritchie, Judge, USPTO
- Shirin Laor-Raz Salemnia, Founder and CEO, PlayWerks, Inc.
- Tony Scuddellari, Vice President, TV Music Creative, Sony Pictures Television
- Andy Senasac, Senior Paralegal, Zuber Lawler & Del Duca
- Julie Spira, CEO, Social Media and More
- Stephen Strauss, Partner, Fulwider Patton LLP
- Gregory Wendt, Senior Wealth Advisor, StakeHolders Capital
- Jason Zedeck, Attorney, Law Office of Jason Zedeck
- Tom Zuber, Founder/ Managing Partner, Zuber Lawler & Del Duca
Sophia Lau Quoted in Main Street Article on Credit Worthiness
Category: Press | Thursday, January 23rd, 2014 | Comments Off on Sophia Lau Quoted in Main Street Article on Credit Worthiness
Sophia Lau was quoted in Juliette Fairley’s Main Street article titled “Increase Your Perceived Creditworthiness With These Tweet Tips.” The article discusses the effect posts on social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, have on an individual’s credit worthiness.
Bryan Sullivan Quoted in Yahoo! Movies
Category: News, Press | Friday, December 6th, 2013 | Comments Off on Bryan Sullivan Quoted in Yahoo! Movies
Bryan Sullivan was quoted in Leslie Gornstein’s Yahoo! article regarding the tragic death of Paul Walker. The full article can be found here.
Stephen Ma Quoted in “REITs Look to Private Offerings”
Category: News, Press | Thursday, November 7th, 2013 | Comments Off on Stephen Ma Quoted in “REITs Look to Private Offerings”
Early Sullivan partner Stephen Ma was quoted in Andrew McIntyre’s October 25, 2013 Los Angeles Daily Journal article “REITs Look to Private Offerings.”
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With the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, or JOBS Act, rule that last month lifted an 80-year-old ban on public advertising for investments, some nontraded real estate investment trusts have started looking at alternatives to a costly registration filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The move comes amid a record fundraising year for nontraded REITS, having already raised $12 billion – the most ever in a single year – according to a report by The Investment Program Association and Robert A. Stanger & Co. Inc.
Darryl Steinhause, a partner at DLA Piper in San Diego, said REITs, which already have a laundry list of complex requirements to meet in order to maintain their status, are now opting for so-called Rule 506(c) private placement offerings under the new rule. He recalled a REIT client who had earlier planned to register its securities with the SEC under an S-11 filing as saying, “Why would we do that? It will cost us $7 million to $12 million to get our REIT really going.” The client, which Steinhause declined to name, determined it could instead do a 506(c) offering for a matter of a few hundred thousand dollars to try to reach its fundraising target of $50 million.
Rule 506 offerings themselves are not new, but 506(c) offerings allow companies to advertise to the general public – on the radio, television, or even via billboards on U.S. Route 101 – and represent a potential game changer in the fundraising world. Such offerings can still only be sold to accredited investors, who are individuals with annual incomes of more than $200,000 – $300,000 for couples – or assets, excluding primary residence, of more than $1 million.
Lawyers use similar sets of documents for 506 and S-11 offerings, and disclosures are similar. But structure aside, the offerings are miles apart. S-11 offerings have to be reviewed by the SEC and, unless they qualify for an exemption, are subject to state-by-state review, while 506 offerings aren’t subject to any review. It takes months and costs millions to set up S-11 offerings, while 506 offerings take just weeks and cost thousands. Furthermore, companies that do 506 offerings don’t have to reveal information that their competitors might use to gain an upper hand.
“If I was putting together a REIT and wanted to buy distressed properties in Riverside, and had to put projections in a filing with the SEC, and someone saw that, someone could steal my thunder pretty easily,” said Samuel C. Dibble, a corporate partner at Farella Braun & Martel LLP in San Francisco.
The recovering real estate market has boosted fundraising for nontraded REITs, which this year has already broken the $11 billion record set in 2007. There has also been considerable transactional activity in the nontraded REIT space. American Realty Capital Trust IV Inc., for one, has a pending $3.1 billion sale to publicly-traded American Realty Capital Properties Inc.
“Many in the real estate industry will likely utilize this law to raise equity,” said David P. Lari, a real estate partner at Cox Castle & Nicholson LLP in Los Angeles. “I think you’ll see the new law used more in the higher-risk, higher-reward real estate transactions.”
The SEC on Wednesday voted to move forward with the second of its JOBS Act provisions, the long-awaited crowdfunding rule designed to help startups raise capital in so-called online “portals.” Lawyers say this would impact a host of companies including REITs, although the SEC still needs another vote on that measure before it could go into effect.
“The REIT scenario is very interesting. … There are people who have been sitting on money since 2008 who are looking to invest in real estate,” said Stephen Y. Ma, a partner at Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae LLP in Los Angeles. “The trick is, they’ve got to have the resources – the lawyers, the consultants – to make sure they’re complying with the rules.”
Indeed, that question of compliance is a sticking point for some companies, but also a source of work for lawyers.
“I’ve had a lot of clients ask,” Farella Braun’s Dibble said, “and say, ‘We won’t be the guinea pig here.'”
The SEC can’t fault companies for advertising, but as the agency comes out with new guidance on the process of documenting accredited investors, it could fault companies for not complying in that arena, say lawyers. And, of course, whenever there is a loosening of regulations, there is a heightened chance for fraud.
“Any real estate type of entity out raising capital may want to avail itself to the loosened restrictions,” said Seith Weissman, a partner at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP in Los Angeles. “Until the new regulations come out, there’s going to be a lot of cursory interest in the topic. I don’t think you’ll see a massive flood of new types of advertising or investment.
Michele W. Layne, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles regional office, declined to comment on the topic, and the SEC in Washington, D.C. couldn’t be reached for comment.
Despite the uncertainties, Steinhause said other companies have come to him. He thinks REITs may use the opportunity to advertise 506 offerings as way of testing the water before perhaps later filing an S-11.
“What I think what you will see is that some REITs will do a 506(c) offering to see how viable the REIT concept is for that sponsor,” Steinhause wrote in an email. “After they have established a track record and own specified properties, it will make it much easier to sell their REIT shares in a publicly registered offering.”
Bryan Sullivan Quoted in Bill Donahue’s Law360 Article
Category: News, Press | Thursday, October 17th, 2013 | Comments Off on Bryan Sullivan Quoted in Bill Donahue’s Law360 Article
EA Out Of Antitrust Suit But NCAA Won’t Budge An Inch
Law360, New York (October 03, 2013, 7:12 PM ET) — EA Sports and the Collegiate Licensing Co. both reached settlements last week to escape a high-profile antitrust class action seeking payment for college athletes, but experts say the NCAA likely has too much at stake to reach a similar compromise any time soon.
Under the settlement, EA and CLC reportedly agreed to pay $40 million to thousands of current and former NCAA student-athletes, over antitrust claims based on the use of their names and likenesses in commercial exploitations like EA’s yearly college football video game. That leaves the NCAA alone to defend against a claim that more or less directly challenges decades of NCAA status quo: that the student-athletes deserve a cut of the revenue big college sports programs bring in, including the hundreds of millions in yearly money from television deals.
But the NCAA has said it won’t back down from the challenge the way its co-defendants did. Donald Remy, the association’s chief legal officer, told USA Today last week that the NCAA was prepared to “take this all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to,” adding that the organization is “not prepared to compromise on the case.”
That’s partly because the NCAA has far more to lose in compromising than a company like EA Sports ever did. The video game giant was using the players’ likenesses to sell millions of games, but the college football game was just one among a big stable of consistent cash cows like the Madden football and FIFA soccer series.
“EA is just a company. It’s a business decision — it’s that simple,” said Bryan M. Sullivan, a partner at Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae LLP. “The NCAA has other issues. If they pay off a settlement, it may have an effect going forward. What policy changes are they going to have to make in the future? Do they have to pay players now?”
The NCAA’s member schools sell broadcasting rights to college football games that bring in hundreds of millions a year. For example, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 — the NCAA’s highest-grossing conferences — each made $250 million on television deals last year, according to Forbes.
With EA gone, the suit is now going to focus on the bigger issue of whether the age-old system of college amateurism needs to change in order to share a slice of that revenue pie with the players. So for the NCAA, the case is putting at risk more than just one video game, meaning there’s a strong disincentive to reach a similar settlement.
“[If the] principle becomes that student athletes are going to get paid for their skills, for playing football or basketball, then the whole house of cards that the NCAA is built on crumbles,” said Gregory Herbert, a shareholder with Greenberg Traurig LLP.
And while the tide of public opinion might be turning toward a system that eventually does pay some of the college game’s biggest stars, the actual legal case at hand is no slam dunk for the plaintiffs that would immediately force NCAA to cut its losses and settle. After all, it’s already more than four years old.
“There are a lot of folks out there who seem to think there’s a lot of pressure on the NCAA to settle now. I don’t think so,” Herbert said. “They can have all the sympathy in the world behind them, and it might be pretty tough for a jury to find in favor of [the NCAA], but it might not get that far.”
The first reason, and perhaps most obvious, is that the U.S. Supreme Court has already technically said bans on student pay are legal. In its 1984 ruling in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, an antitrust case over television deals that the NCAA actually lost, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote one key line: “[A]thletes must not be paid, must be required to attend class, and the like.”
The sentence wasn’t directly tied to the central issue of that case, and the players in the current case clearly dispute that it applies to their claims, but it’s a strong piece of case law they’ll have to overcome, attorneys say.
Another issue is class certification. The Supreme Court has been none-too-friendly to class actions in the last few years, and college athletes pose a unique problem for class status: Does Heisman winner Johnny Manziel deserve the same cut of damages as a second-string punter?
“Legally speaking, the claims have a number of hurdles to clear,” Herbert said.
Aside from monetary incentives and strong legal routes, the NCAA is also seemingly willing to fight until the end. With deals like the 14-year, nearly $11 billion contract the association signed with CBS and Turner Sports in 2010 for the annual NCAA tournament, it has plenty of money to do so.
“They certainly have the war chest to fight this for a while,” Sullivan said.
The student-athletes are represented by The Lanier Law Firm and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, among others.
The case is In re: Student-Athlete Name & Likeness Licensing Litigation, case number 4:09-cv-01967, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
–Editing by Elizabeth Bowen and Edrienne Su.
Source: Law360
Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae Wins Outstanding Web Award
Category: Press | Tuesday, October 1st, 2013 | Comments Off on Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae Wins Outstanding Web Award
Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae is proud to announce that its website has won a 2013 Web Award: Outstanding Website from the Web Marketing Association.
The WebAwards are the standards-defining competition that sets industry benchmarks based on the seven criteria of a successful Web site. It recognizes the individual and team achievements of Web professionals all over the world who create and maintain outstanding Web sites.
“The WebAwards look into all aspects of website development, It’s not just a beauty contest for Websites,” said William Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association. “Our expert judges evaluate the entire interactive experience and reward those sites that are best in their industry. The goal of the WebAwards is to both recognize the people and organizations responsible for developing some of the most effective Web sites on the Internet today and also provide valuable feedback to entrants on how their sites stack up against their peers and their industry’s standards of excellence.”
Stephen Ma Quoted in Chicago Sun Times
Category: News, Press | Thursday, September 5th, 2013 | Comments Off on Stephen Ma Quoted in Chicago Sun Times
Early Sullivan Partner Stephen Ma was quoted in Chicago Sun Times music writer Mark Guarino’s piece “Kid Rock banks on $20 tickets to thwart scalpers.”
Early Sullivan Lawyers Successfully Defend First American Title Insurance In $26 Million Bad Faith and Breach of Contract Case Following 3 Week Arbitration
Category: News, Press | Friday, August 23rd, 2013 | Comments Off on Early Sullivan Lawyers Successfully Defend First American Title Insurance In $26 Million Bad Faith and Breach of Contract Case Following 3 Week Arbitration
On June 25, 2013, after more than a year of hard fought litigation and a 3 week trial, a Panel of 3 arbitrators of the American Arbitration Association denied a wealthy plaintiff’s claims for breach of contract and bad faith against Early Sullivan client, First American Title Insurance Company, stemming from a dispute involving the most exclusive personal residence in Maui, Hawaii. On August 8, 2013, the Arbitration Panel’s Award was confirmed by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, in the case captioned First American Title Insurance Co. v. Lochland Holdings LLC (USDC C.D.Cal., Case No. 11-01861) (AAA Case No. 72 159 Y 00274 11). The case, handled by Early Sullivan attorneys Eric Early, Scott Gizer, Peter Scott and Amy Beverlin, was first reported in the title insurance industry’s premier publication, The Legal Description. A full copy of the article describing the case can be found by clicking the PDF icon on the right.
Devin McRae Earns Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Rating 5.0 Out Of 5.0
Category: Awards, News, Press | Tuesday, July 30th, 2013 | Comments Off on Devin McRae Earns Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Rating 5.0 Out Of 5.0
“A Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating reflects a combination of achieving a Very High General Ethical Standards rating and a Legal Ability numerical rating…AV® Preeminent™ (4.5 – 5.0) – An AV® certification mark is a significant rating accomplishment – a testament to the fact that a lawyer’s peers rank him or her at the highest level of professional excellence.”
Source: Martindale-Hubbell
Scott Gizer Quoted in “Rising Interest Rates Could Trigger Flurry of Real Estate Deals” – Law360
Category: News, Press | Friday, July 12th, 2013 | Comments Off on Scott Gizer Quoted in “Rising Interest Rates Could Trigger Flurry of Real Estate Deals” – Law360
Scott Gizer was quoted in leading national legal publication Law360 in Kaitlin Ugolik’s article “Rising Interest Rates Could Trigger Flurry of Real Estate Deals.” The article discusses the impending surge of real estate sales and refinancings due to the governments wind-down of economy-stimulating efforts. Gizer is quoted as saying:
“People have dealt with higher interest rates for most of their lives…[An increase in deals] could continue the growth and rise in prices we’ve been seeing, and create more positive momentum by putting some people who weren’t able to refinance before in a better position to do so.”