Would you believe a cool half-mill to prep Dick Fuld for his congressional testimony?

Arthur Gajarsa, who retired his robes in June after 15 years on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, has joined Wilmer's Boston office as a senior counsel to the firm's IP litigation practice.

In a legal profession populated by the risk-averse, litigators stand out as an intrepid lot. So it should come as little surprise that each year a handful of high-profile practitioners opt to leave the comforts of large, established law firms to strike out on their own.

To the relief of the business community, the Federal Circuit ruled en banc that a section of the patent law that prohibits promoting infringement abroad does not apply to method patents, only to patented devices. The opinion lets St. Jude off the hook for some damages but, more importantly, also overturns the Federal Circuit's own precedent.

When we think of predatory lending, we usually think of victims who are relatively poor and unsophisticated. But a group of luxury resort homeowners in Nevada, Idaho, the Grand Bahamas, and Montana are moving forward with claims that they, too, were taken advantage of by a predatory lending scheme orchestrated by Credit Suisse and Cushman Wakefield.

Three weeks after erasing a $358 million verdict for Alcatel-Lucent on appeal, Microsoft has escaped a $388 million verdict for Uniloc. A judge in Rhode Island vacated the award on posttrial motions by Fish & Richardson, leaving Uniloc's Mintz Levin lawyers--who took the case on contingency--in the cold.