Another settlement domino toppled this week in the Heller Ehrman bankruptcy, when Greenberg Traurig agreed to a $4.9 million deal to resolve claims that one of its partners failed to disclose a conflict of interest with Heller lender Bank of America.

Court-appointed trustees in big-ticket bankruptcies are taking bold steps to recover billions from alleged malefactors on Wall Street and beyond.

The government has brought lots of cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but there are still some crucial aspects of the law that remain unsettled. For instance, are employees of state-run enterprises "foreign officials" under the law? The issue has never been heard on appeal, but that's about to change.

Any court opinion that contains the words, "Crystalline 7-[2-(2-aminothiazol-4-yl)-2-hydroxyiminoacetamido]-3-vinyl-3-cephem.-4-carboxylic acid," doesn't exactly put us in our comfort zone. Yet, upon closer inspection, it appears that the Federal Circuit's en banc decision Monday in Lupin Ltd. v. Abbott Laboratories is an important and long-awaited clarification of patent law that deserves attention. After decades of debate within the IP bar and the Federal Circuit, a divided en banc panel on Monday established the standard for evaluating so-called patent-by-process claims.