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10
World Report - USA
JULY 2013
MPs urged to reject contentious tax pact with the US
MPs a controversial
should reject tax
agreement with the US after it has been revealed that American authorities are unlikely to honour the deal’s fundamental
reciprocity
clause, says the chief executive of the world’s largest
financial organisation.
The deVere Group’s Nigel Green spoke out on July 4th – coincidentally American Independence Day - after US Congressman Bill Posey, an influential member of the House Financial Services Committee, yesterday in a letter to the US Treasury Secretary cast doubt on the Treasury’s ability to promise the world’s governments that they can expect financial
information
reporting with the US to be reciprocal, should they agree to enforce America’s Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
Mr Green commented: “FATCA’s
supposed
guarantee of reciprocity has been the ‘hook’ for many governments, including Britain’s coalition.
“World governments were informed that if they signed a FATCA intergovernmental agreement (IGA) with the US Treasury, in return they will receive information on the financial affairs of their own citizens who live in the United States. The IGA will
force all governments’ these financial
independent advisory
institutions to report their American clients’ financial activities directly to the US Internal Revenue Service – meaning, in effect, they will act as de facto IRS snooping agents.
“However, as Congressman Posey’s letter underscores, the US Treasury does not have the legal authority to keep this promise of reciprocity.”
He continued: “Meanwhile, MPs could be about to approve Clause 219 of Finance Bill 2, granting HMRC virtually unlimited power to impose FATCA in the UK – at huge expense to British financial institutions which will then, no doubt, be passed on to customers - on the false premise of US reciprocity.
As such, the deVere Group chief executive is urging parliament to reject FATCA.
“When the FATCA issue returns to the House of Commons, after it has been rubber-stamped in the Lords on 15th July, politicians must vote it down because the US is unlikely to keep its side of the deal,” he says.
“The coalition caved into US demands over FATCA on the understanding that the UK would benefit from a reciprocal exchange. Yet there appears to be no reciprocity that can stick.”
Latham IP litigators guide transPerfect Global to victory in patent case
After years of hotly- contested
litigation
between two competitors providing
website
translation services, our client, TransPerfect Global, Inc., won a decisive jury verdict which found three patents owned by its rival, MotionPoint Corp., to be both invalid and not infringed by TransPerfect, and that MotionPoint infringed a valid TransPerfect patent and was liable for damages of over $1 million. Latham & Watkins LLP represents TransPerfect and was lead counsel in the trial with an intellectual property litigation team led by partners Doug Lumish, Jeffrey Homrig, and Gabriel
Gross in Silicon Valley and partner Michael Eisenberg in New York along with associates Joseph Lee in Orange County and Nikolaus Woloszczuk in Silicon Valley. The litigation began in 2010 when, after MotionPoint began using its patents and thinly-veiled allegations of infringement to scare potential customers, TransPerfect filed a declaratory judgment
complaint
seeking to establish that MotionPoint’s patents were invalid and not infringed. The action expanded in 2011 when TransPerfect merged with translation company WorldLingo and added claims for damages and injunctive relief based
on MotionPoint’s
infringement of an early WorldLingo patent.
Lumish stated, “This was a great outcome for TransPerfect. TransPerfect always
knew that
MotionPoint was claiming to have invented things that were done by others in the industry long before MotionPoint even entered the translation business, and it had the guts to fight and prove it. I am thrilled that the jury vindicated TransPerfect and left it free to compete in the marketplace without the cloud of MotionPoint’s claims of infringement.”
ABA publication aims to close gender pay gap, propel female lawyers
across barriers to gender equity The American Bar Association Task Force on Gender Equity has published What You Need to Know about Negotiating Compensation, a guide to promote gender equity in the legal profession by eliminating the pay disparity between male and female lawyers.
compensation criteria and offers insight into a process that varies widely among firms. This guide also presents step-by-step instructions for gathering information to counteract
gender
stereotypes and implicit biases that adversely affect compensation decisions.
What You Need to Know about
Negotiating
Compensation contains specific strategies and techniques for how best to navigate a law firm’s compensation system and how to strengthen and leverage one’s negotiating position. It contains an extensive list of
“This comprehensive guide for negotiation empowers female partners with an arsenal of
information
and insight into the compensation processes at law firms,” ABA President Laurel G. Bellows said. “Information is power. The ‘know your law firm’ information set out in this guide will catapult more
women forward across the remaining barriers to gender equity.”
The guide was written by three female lawyers: Carol Frohlinger, co-founder of the advisory firm Negotiating Women Inc.; Andrea S. Kramer, who chairs the Gender Diversity Subcommittee
at
McDermott Will & Emery; and Jane DiRenzo Pigott, managing director of R3 Group LLC, which specializes in diversity/ inclusion consulting.
What You Need to Know about Negotiating Compensation is available as a PDF.