Recent Developments

On July 9, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued its decision in Sunbeam Products, Inc. v. Chicago American Manufacturing, LLC, and in doing so handed a major victory to trademark licensees whose licenses are rejected in bankruptcy by trademark owners. A copy of the opinion is available through this link. However, before discussing the details of the opinion, it's important to put it in context first. And for that, we need to journey back to the 1980s.

The Winter 2012 edition of the Absolute Priority newsletter, published by the Bankruptcy & Restructuring group at Cooley LLP, of which I am a member, has recently been released. The newsletter gives updates on current developments and trends in the bankruptcy and workout area.

Bankruptcy Rule Amendments. As reported in a post last month, this year's amendments to the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure have now taken effect today, December 1, 2011.

Almost every year, changes are made to the set of rules that govern how bankruptcy cases are managed -- the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. The changes address issues identified by an Advisory Committee made up of federal judges, bankruptcy attorneys, and others. There are seven amendments to the national bankruptcy rules this year.

Creditor Derivative Claims Against Fiduciaries Of Insolvent Corporate Entities. In a 2007 decision in North American Catholic Educational Programming, Inc. v. Gheewalla, et al., 930 A.2d 92 (Del.