Apple Inc. and Ericsson AB are suing each other in U.S. courts after failing to reach an agreement over the pricing of wireless-technology patents used by the maker of the iPhone and iPad, reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Apple, saying that Ericsson is seeking excessive royalty rates, asked a federal court in California Jan. 12 to rule that Ericsson’s patents aren’t essential to long term evolution, or LTE, standards. Stockholm-based Ericsson said it filed a complaint in a district court in Texas, asking for a verdict on whether its fees are fair, Blomberg reports.

Ericsson helped pioneer the mobile-device market with its handsets in the 1990s but sold its mobile-phone business to Sony Corp. in February 2012, five years after Apple introduced the iPhone, which is now its largest revenue source.

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A pair of Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate have re-introduced legislation aimed at preventing the abuse of offshore tax havens by multinational companies, reports Accounting Today.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, a senior member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Senate Budget Committee, introduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act on Monday. The bill would close a number of offshore tax breaks, eliminating many tax incentives for U.S. companies to move jobs and operations offshore, and modifying the rules on corporate inversions for businesses dodging U.S. taxes.

Doggett and Whitehouse introduced similar legislation in 2013, Accounting Today reports.

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A free on-demand webinar frames the history of the net neutrality debate and then explores the current proposed rules and the public response they have generated. The event is a Rocket Matter webinar with Michael Weinberg, a Vice President at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit digital advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

The webinar also puts the debate in the larger context of innovation on the internet and explain how you can get involved.

Over one million net neutrality comments have been filed with the Federal Communications Commission on the proposal that would allow cable companies to charge content providers extra fees to deliver faster service.

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When Elon Musk, who loudly disdains the traditional auto industry, makes his first public appearance in Detroit in two years on Tuesday, it will be easy to see how much has changed since then, The Wall Street Journal says in a new post.

In a speech Tuesday at an auto-show event, Musk is expected to criticize larger auto makers for not responding to Tesla even more aggressively. He denounces the rest of the industry as only halfheartedly trying to produce battery-powered cars for the masses, not just early adopters.

The Journal says Tesla is worth $26 billion in stock-market value, nearly half the size of GM or Ford Motor Co.

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United Airlines has announced that Brett Hart, its executive vice president and general counsel, will assume responsibility for customer care and customer experience. John Rainey, United’s chief financial officer, will take on strategy.

Hart joined the airline in 2010 after a stint in the same job for food group Sara Lee, following a period as a partner for the Chicago law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, reports Quartz.com.

Hart will have his job cut out for him, Quartz says. Despite making improvements in metrics like on-time performance, mishandled bags, passenger complaints, and overbooked flights, United still ranked 12th out of 15 U.S. airlines, and last among major carriers, according to the annual Air Quality Rankings released in April.

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Winstead has posted a complimentary on-demand webinar covering generally accepted negotiation conventions.

Whether settling a disputed claim or agreeing to a transaction, it is important to know the accepted ethical limits in negotiation strategies, the firm says on its website. For example, what is “material’ for purposes of Rule 4.01? This recorded webinar covers questions like this.

The target audience for the webinar are in-house counsel and other key decision-making litigation contacts at banks and financial institutions.

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The National Labor Relations Board’s General Counsel’s Office has again signaled its commitment to expanding the scope of the current test for joint employment, reports Orrick’s Employment Law and Litigation Blog.

In a move that could have implications for a broad array of franchise relationships, on Dec. 19, 2014, the General Counsel of the NLRB announced that it has issued complaints against both McDonald’s franchisees and McDonald’s USA, the franchisor, as a joint employer.

The decision to name McDonald’s as a respondent is consistent with the General Counsel’s recent advocacy that the current joint employment standard is too narrow, the blog reports.

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BlackBerry Ltd. launched its long-awaited Classic Dec. 17, a smartphone it hopes will help it win back market share and woo those still using older versions of its physical keyboard devices, Reuters reports.

With the Classic and the recent launch of its Passport smartphone, Blackberry is in some ways taking the company back to its roots, re-emphasizing the physical keyboard, rather than trying to compete directly against the touchscreen handsets of dominant rivals like Samsung Electronics and Apple, Reuters says.

In a press release, Blackberry CEO and chairman John Chen said, “We listened closely to our customers’ feedback to ensure we are delivering the technologies to power them through their day – and that feedback led directly to the development of BlackBerry Classic. BlackBerry Classic is the powerful communications tool that many BlackBerry Bold and Curve users have been waiting for. It’s the secure device that feels familiar in their hands, with the added performance and agility they need to be competitive in today’s busy world.”

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PetSmart agreed on Sunday to sell itself to a group led by the investment firm BC Partners for about $8.7 billion, months after the retailer came under pressure from two hedge funds, reports The New York Times.

The agreement represents the biggest leveraged buyout of an American company of 2014.

JPMorgan Chase and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised PetSmart. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Ernst & Young provided advice, while Citigroup, Nomura, Jefferies, Barclays and Deutsche Bank provided debt financing.

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Many large retailers remain woefully unprepared to defend against a cyber attack, according to security experts quoted in a report in The San Jose Mercury News.

Cyber thieves are smarter and more efficient at breaking into retailers’ networks and stealing consumer data, and some credit card companies are ratcheting down fraud protection to speed transactions during the shopping rush. That sets up the holidays to potentially be a whammy of a payday for criminal groups — and puts consumers at greater risk as they enter the biggest shopping season of the year.

The report says consumers can expect to pay — as retailers face mounting fines from financial regulators for data breaches, and must invest in pricey new security systems, some experts expect the costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

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The president of the American Bar Association is set to urge chief executives at all of America’s Fortune 500 companies to commit to ending human-rights abuses in their supply chains. The ABA president will send executives the message in a letter by the end of this year, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Even though a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has made it harder to hold U.S. companies liable for child labor, slavery, human trafficking and dangerous working conditions among their suppliers, the risks to corporate brands grows by the day, said Chris Johnson, the former general counsel of General Motors North America who heads the ABA business section’s supply-chain initiative.

The Star Tribune quoted Johnson: “Regulation is increasing. Litigation is increasing. It’s astounding to me that companies don’t get out ahead of this. It’s a time bomb.”

Some companies have tried. Johnson credits Starbucks, Microsoft and Coca-Cola with setting examples in assessing and addressing the risks of human-rights violations in their supply chains.

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Restaurant.com is arguing in federal court that it shouldn’t be forced to pay penalties for gift certificates it sold in the past, penalties that could go as high at $1 million.

The company has been defending itself since 2010 against the class action suit filed by two New Jersey residents who bought gift certificates from its website, reports the Chicago Daily Herald.

From the Daily Herald:

Larissa Shelton and Gregory Bohus are suing Restaurant.com on behalf of themselves and others over certificates that had expiration dates and a disclaimer in violation of New Jersey law. That is no longer in dispute after being argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court.

What a U.S. Court of Appeals will decide is whether the rulings can be applied retroactively, in which case Restaurant.com could have to pay a penalty of $100 each for certificates sold in the past — penalties that could total an estimated $1 million.

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The Associated Press is reporting that Louis Chenevert, chief executive officer of aerospace and building systems giant United Technologies Corp., is retiring after six years on the job and will be replaced by the company’s chief financial officer.

The Hartford, Connecticut, conglomerate announced the change of leadership on Monday. It promoted CFO Greg Hayes to the top job, The AP reports.

“Chenevert steered United Technologies’ $18.4 billion purchase of aerospace parts maker Goodrich Corp. in 2012. It was the industry’s largest deal and gave the company a stronger presence in the aerospace industry,” according to the story.

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Forbes magazine offers a list of the top 10 legal mistakes entrepreneurs make and what to do about them (in addition to seeking the advice of an attorney).

First on the list is failure to incorporate. “At some point, this hurts them because they want to get outside investors, founders leave or they get sued by a customer or employee. Not having the right legal structure can open them up for personal liability,” the article says.

The list also includes tips about shareholders’ agreements, human resource guidelines, talking trash about the competition, and more.

Another is bringing in outside investors. “Many small business owners bring in outside investors since they are desperate for cash. They then run into disagreement on how the company is to be run and the investors threaten legal action,” Forbes says.

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Target Corp. is trying to avoid liability for tens of millions of dollars banks claim to have lost after hackers broke into the retailer’s payment processing systems a year ago.

According to a report at Bloomberg News, Target didn’t have a legal duty to the banks because card payments are processed through third-party intermediaries, Douglas Meal, the retailer’s lawyer, told U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson in St. Paul, Minnesota. Target isn’t liable to the lenders, he said today in urging the judge to dismiss the case.

The banks “are claiming that Target had a duty to protect them from that criminal activity,” Meal said. “The only way that would be true is if there is a special relationship between the parties,” and there is none.

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Arizona has filed suit against General Motors, claiming that the automaker defrauded the state’s consumers of an estimated $3 billion, The New York Times reports.

The suit is the first major legal action against GM over its record number of recalls this year, most notable among them one for a defective ignition switch in 2.6 million small cars that was delayed for a decade. The suit suggests that “multiple in-house attorneys” were aware of the problem, including Michael P. Milliken, the company’s general counsel for the past five years.

The Times said the complaint was harsh and unsparing in its criticism of GM, suggesting that the automaker intentionally misled consumers through its advertising, website and public statements, and that some of its top leaders were complicit in the alleged misdeeds.

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Baker Tilly hosts a complimentary on-demand webinar on how to analyze a contract for project risk and learn how to develop a risk mitigation plan.

The webinar includes a case study review of guarantee maximum price, stipulated sum, and unit priced contracts.

Topics also include: What a contract risk analysis is, decomposing a contract, contract assessment red flags, and refining contract content.

On its website, Baker Tilly says learning objectives include gaining the ability to assess a contract for risk, recognize unfavorable contract provisions, uncover contract omissions, and identify project controls or actions to help mitigate construction project risk.

Watch the webinar and download the slides.

Any business transaction involving simple negotiations could be subject to prosecution, former Jefferies & Co. managing director Jesse Litvak warned an appeals court in an attempt to have his securities fraud conviction thrown out, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

Litvak, found guilty in March of lying to customers about the price of mortgage-backed securities, on Nov. 18 asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan to throw out the conviction, saying it could be used to turn “garden-variety statements” made in all kinds of negotiations — even car lot negotiations — into the basis for charges.

“Every car salesman who tells a customer that he cannot lower his price any further because he would earn only a minuscule profit on the sale as it is would be guilty of fraud,” Litvak’s lawyers said in a filing.

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Reuters is reporting that credit monitoring company One Technologies LP will refund $22 million to customers to settle U.S government allegations that its websites inadequately disclosed its charges for credit scores.

Reuters attributed the report to information shared by the two sides on Wednesday.

“A draft complaint from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleged that the Dallas-based privately held company advertised free access to credit scores but charged customers $29.95 per month,” the news agency said. “At least 210,000 people have complained about One Technologies’ practices since 2008, the FTC said in the complaint.”

One Technologies also has changed its websites to make advisories about what it charged more conspicuous, the company and the FTC said.

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Wingstop Restaurants Inc. has appointed Jay Young to be the company’s next general counsel.

Young will serve on the company’s executive leadership team, reporting directly to President and CEO Charlie Morrison.

In a release, the company said Young joins Wingstop during a year of record-setting growth.

“We are delighted to welcome Jay, a great addition to the Wingstop team,” said Charlie Morrison, Wingstop President and CEO. “Jay is a highly-experienced executive whose business and legal acumen will be invaluable to us as we continue to aggressively grow our proven concept. We look forward to his contributions.”

Young brings more than 18 years of legal expertise to Wingstop, including an extensive background in the restaurant and financial services industries. Before joining Wingstop, Young served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel for CEC Entertainment (Chuck E. Cheese), a nationally recognized leader in family dining and entertainment.

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