Steve Strauss of Cooley got a team from Latham & Watkins booted from a suit arising from the largest Ponzi scheme in San Diego history—a $400 million fraud where investors loaned money escrowed at Chicago Title to provide bridge loans to liquor licenses purchasers in California. (This being a Ponzi, no licenses were actually purchased.) Representing the title company, Strauss convinced San Diego Superior Court Judge Ronald Styn to grant a motion to disqualify on August 31 based on a finding that Latham had represented Chicago Title in another case that had a “substantial relationship” to the matter at hand.
IP litigator Stuart Dunwoody of Davis Wright Tremaine tasted victory at the Federal Circuit for Washington State University. The appellate court unsealed a decision last week in a big showdown over the rights to cultivate and sell the patented Cosmic Crisp apple, labelled by the New York Times as “the most promising and important apple of the future.” The court agreed with Dunwoody’s argument that the option ag-tech company Phytelligence had to license the fruit via a draft propagation agreement from 2012 was an unenforceable “agreement to agree” and not “an agreement with open terms.”
