Back in the day--say, the last two decades of the twentieth century--we bankruptcy lawyers took it largely on faith that the right structural and contractual provisions purporting to confer bankruptcy-remoteness[1] were enforceable and likely to be successful in preventing an entity from becoming, voluntarily or involuntarily, a debtor under the Bankruptcy Code.

Certain licensees of intellectual property are expressly given expanded rights when their licensors file bankruptcy. But what about trademark licensees? Trademarks are not among the defined categories of “intellectual property” for bankruptcy purposes. Nonetheless, are trademark licensees otherwise protected in a licensor bankruptcy? Unfortunately for these licensees, a recent circuit court decision put the brakes on attempts to expand protection to licensees of trademarks.

A long-running issue concerning the treatment of trademark licenses in bankruptcy has seen a new milestone with the January 12 decision of the First Circuit in Mission Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC.[1] The issue was implicit in the Bankruptcy Code from the time of its adoption in 1978 and flared into the open with the decision of the Fourth Circuit in Lubrizol Enterprises, Inc. v.

In a prior post, we examined whether state-licensed marijuana businesses, and those doing business with marijuana businesses, can seek relief under the Bankruptcy Code.

As more and more states pass laws allowing the sale of marijuana, whether for medicinal or recreational purposes, investors will try to claim their share of what is certainly going to be a lucrative market. However, even in a growing market, private enterprises fail or need restructuring. This raises the question of whether distressed marijuana businesses, and those doing business with marijuana businesses, can seek relief under the Bankruptcy Code.

When the fallout from failed intellectual-property litigation collides with bankruptcy, the complexities may be dizzying enough, but when the emerging practices and imperatives of litigation financing are imposed on those complexities, the situation might be likened to three-dimensional chess. But in the court of one veteran bankruptcy judge, the complexities were penetrated to reveal that elementary errors and oversights can have decisive effects.

It is a unique characteristic of debt restructuring under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code that a majority of a class of creditors can accept a modification of the terms of the debts owed to the class members, as provided in a plan of reorganization, and thereby bind non-accepting class members.[1] The ordinary route to confirming a Chapter 11 plan is to obtain its acceptance by a majority of every impaired class of creditors and equity hold

Last Friday, October 13, Judge Sean H. Lane of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York issued an opinion addressing the presumption against extraterritoriality of US law as well as the limits of the doctrine of international comity.

Avoiding a fraudulent transfer to the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) in bankruptcy has become easier, or at least clearer, as a result of a recent unanimous decision by a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Zazzali v. United States (In re DBSI, Inc.), 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 16817 (9th Cir. Aug. 31, 2017).

For decades, restructuring and insolvency matters in the Dominican Republic involving merchants and companies in non-regulated industries have been carried out on a “de facto” basis, due to the obsolescence of the existing legal framework and institutions. Fortunately, that is not the case anymore.