Winners and losers in patent law suits. Patent holders win an average of 59 percent of the time nationwide, according to LegalMetric, a company that tracks patent litigation. Chuck Fish, the chief patent counsel for Time Warner, told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property earlier this year. This was reported in the NY Times, Sept. 24, 2006 at BU9.
Four time general counsel, Further to my post of June 19, 2006, there are two more four timers. Anastasia D. Kelly has become the general counsel of American International Group after she served as general counsel at MCI/WorldCom, Sears, Roebuck, and Fannie Mae. Marshall Smith, Brunswick’s general counsel, was previously the top legal officer of Veritas, IMC Global and one earlier company.
General Counsel promoted to chief executive. To previous examples (See my post of Jan. 27, 2006 with three such promotions), several more have come to light. In August 2006 reinsurance giant Scottish Re named legal head Paul Goldean to be its interim chief executive. Goldean joined the company four and a half years before from the law firm Jones Day. According to LegalWeek, Aug. 10, 2006 at 4, other general counsel who have become UK chief executives in recent years include Reuter’s Tom Glocer, Coca-Cola’s Lowry Kline, and Bradford & Bingley’s Steven Crawshaw.
Technorati and blog posts that mention “general counsel.” A few months ago I entered the term “general counsel” on Technorati whereupon it searched blog posts in all languages for the previous 90 days. Technorati produced a chart with a column for each day (See my post of Oct. 1, 2006 on graphics.) to show the 40-60 posts per week day, with a handful of spikes as high as 100. At the time, Technorati was tracking 38.7 million blog sites.