Have you heard of a “design” patent? Maybe someone you know mentioned this as a less expensive alternative to a “regular” U.S. patent. The U.S. patent laws actually define three basic types of patents: utility patents, design patents, and plant patents. Utility Patents Utility patents are by far the most common type of patent. To date, over 11...
On January 13, 2022, the United States Supreme Court blocked the OSHA ETS rule, which mandated private employers with at least 100 employees require their employees to be fully vaccinated or submit to a weekly COVID test and wear face masks. Six of the Court’s nine justices held that the ETS constituted an attempt by OSHA to regulate general...
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care providers to proceed. The rule requires nursing homes, hospitals, and certain other participants in the Medicare and Medicaid programs to vaccinate all non-exempt staff[1] against COVID-19. In a separate ruling, the Court blocked the...
Scamming, phishing, pharming, vishing -- people in the business world are well aware that hackers and other fraudsters have developed a myriad of schemes designed to obtain sensitive personal information and money. Every year, these schemes cause businesses to suffer significant financial losses. The FBI estimates that in 2020 business email...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Tuesday announced new dates for nursing homes in Wisconsin and 24 other states to comply with the mandate to vaccinate all non-exempt staff against COVID-19. It also announced plans for survey enforcement. Within 30 days of Tuesday’s directive,[1] these nursing homes must have developed...
Late on Friday, December 17, 2021, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, vacated the Fifth Circuit’s stay on OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”). The ETS mandates private employers with at least 100 employees to be fully vaccinated or submit to a weekly COVID test and wear face masks. Given this swift reversal, OSHA...
After being blocked this month by a federal judge in Louisiana, the COVID vaccination mandate for nursing home staff has been reinstated in Wisconsin and 25 other states, at least for now. The background: In November the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services required nursing homes participating in Medicare and Medicaid to have staff fully...
Even before the Biden Administration promulgated its now-in-legal-limbo vaccination/testing mandates, the COVID-19 pandemic had brought health-related, and religious-related, matters to the forefront of the employer-employee relationship, perhaps like never seen before. As a result, employers often have been forced to have difficult conversations...
The federal requirement that nursing homes vaccinate staff against COVID-19 is on hold temporarily after a judge’s ruling this week in Louisiana. The ruling, coming amid concerns over the omicron variant of the coronavirus, could ease pressure on nursing homes facing staffing shortages but for now leaves vaccination rules in an uncertain status....
In business, many situations require you to share sensitive and confidential information with another individual or company. To ensure the other party respects the confidentiality of this information, a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, is often used. But when is the right time to utilize an NDA? And why should you consider them as part of your...
