A recent decision by a federal court in the state of Washington serves as a reminder that employees who fail drug tests cannot automatically be fired for their drug use. The employer was ordered to pay a former employee $1.8 million for failing to accommodate her disability. The plaintiff, Cynthia Stewart ("Stewart"), had worked as a customer service representative for [...]
The news the last couple of weeks has included stories about businesses firing employees for reasons unrelated to the quality of their work. First, Google fired James Damore for his controversial memo about gender and employment practices, which stated, among other things, that one "possible non-bias cause" of the gender gap in tech is the fact that women are more [...]
Washington's new Driving Under the Influence of Electronics (DUIE) Act takes effect on July 23rd. Texting and holding your cell phone to your ear are already illegal, but the new law specifically forbids all handheld uses of personal electronic devices, including composing and reading any kind of message or data, and taking or viewing photographs - even while at a [...]
Last month, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) cannot reject trademark applications merely because the trademark being applied for is disparaging. Section 2(a) of the federal Trademark Act provides that registration can be denied to any mark that "Consists of or comprises immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may disparage persons, [...]
This month, Oregon became the latest state to outlaw pay discrimination based on protected classes and compensation history. The new law applies to all employers in Oregon (except for the federal government), regardless of size. The Equal Pay Act prohibits Oregon employers from paying employees who perform "work of comparable character" different pay rates because of their race, color, [...]
Although the US Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, recently issued a memo stating that the federal government will no longer take the position that Title VII's prohibition on sex discrimination protects transgender employees, this doesn't mean that employers are now free to discriminate based on sexual identity. A number of federal courts, as well as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), [...]
One of the most valuable assets a business has may be its trade secrets, but, until last year, this form of intellectual property was protected only by a patchwork of state laws. Effective May 11, 2016, the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) created a private right of action for misappropriation of trade secrets. The DTSA doesn't replace state laws, [...]
Trademark infringement and counterfeit products are a serious problem on the Amazon marketplace. In order to help combat these problems, Amazon updated its Amazon Brand Registry this year. The new Amazon Brand Registry allows trademark owners to more easily search for infringements on the site with text and image search and provides a streamlined method for reporting infringements. To qualify [...]
Communications between an attorney and his or her client are generally protected from disclosure by the attorney-client privilege. A communication covered by the attorney-client privilege can never ethically be revealed to anyone by the attorney and can never be subpoenaed by a court unless a specific exception applies. However, the privilege is lost if the communication is made in [...]
Fan fiction is fiction created by fans of another work, about characters or settings from that work. For example, a fan of the Harry Potter series might write a short story based on the Harry Potter character but with a whole new plot. Fan films are, as you might imagine, the same concept applied to film. Often, the creators of [...]