5 Key Takeaways | Making Sense of §102 Public Use and On Sale Bars to Patentability
Eminent Domain: First Principles, Kelo, and In Service of Infrastructure Buildout
Newsflash: Rockweed Not a Fish
The Ohio and U.S. Constitutions require that the power of eminent domain can only be exercised when necessary for a public use. In the 2005 case of Kelo v. City of New London, the U.S. Supreme Court took an expansive view...more
Ending four years of litigation in consolidated cases filed by the Nahant Preservation Trust, Inc. (“Nahant”) and Northeastern University (“Northeastern” or “the University”), the Massachusetts Appeals Court determined that...more
Last week, a court called into question whether a condemnation by a gas utility was for a “public use,” even though the take was initiated by an entity that had the statutory authority to enter, condemn and appropriate land....more
In its decision last week in Town of Sudbury vs. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) declined to expand the reach of the common-law prior public use doctrine. As the...more
Article 97 of the Articles of Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution, approved by the Legislature and ratified by Massachusetts voters in 1972, provides that ‘[l]ands and easements taken or acquired’ for conservation...more