Imagine you are the CEO of company sitting across from an interviewer. The interviewer asks you the age old question, “So tell me about your company’s strengths and weaknesses?” You start thinking about your competitive advantages that distinguish you from competitors. You decide to talk about how you know your customers better than the competition, including who they are, what they need, and how your products and services fit their needs and desires. The interviewer, being somewhat cynical, asks “Aren’t you worried about the liabilities involved with collecting all that data?”

Trademark licensees that file for bankruptcy protection face uncertainty concerning their ability to continue using trademarks that are crucial to their businesses. Some of this stems from an unsettled issue in the courts as to whether a licensee can assume a trademark license without the licensor’s consent. In In re Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., 2015 BL 44152 (Bankr. D. Del. Feb. 20, 2015), a Delaware bankruptcy court reaffirmed that the ongoing controversy surrounding the “actual” versus “hypothetical” test for assumption of a trademark license has not abated.

A debtor's decision to assume or reject an executory contract is typically given deferential treatment by bankruptcy courts under a "business judgment" standard. Certain types of nondebtor parties to such contracts, however, have been afforded special protections. For example, in 1988, Congress added section 365(n) to the Bankruptcy Code, granting some intellectual property licensees the right to continued use of licensed property, notwithstanding a debtor's rejection of the underlying license agreement.