Publications

Attorney General Harris is to be congratulated on her recent re-election. She has been a powerful and effective advocate for crime victims.

California has enacted one of the country's most sophisticated legal protocols for victim restitution. It is a complex web of constitutional provisions, statutes, and cases, and it even includes official court forms.

Copyright Lawyers Are Intimately Familiar with the doctrine of substantial similarity, but many never copyright law's useful article doctrine. The useful article doctrine, also known as the applied art doctrine, serves as an important public policy by preventing copyright holders from obtaining a back-door longer-term patent on a functional article while side-stepping the relatively high novelty and obviousness hurdles of patent examination.

Litigators often reach for doctrines such as res judicata or collateral estoppel to narrow the scope of a case. Res judicata prevents re-litigation of the same claim that was litigated in a prior case.

People v. Smith, 198 Cal. App. 4th 415,439 (2011), held that Marsy's Law added a constitutional right to counsel for victims. "[Victim] Doe had a right to not only be notified of the restitution and to be present, but also to be heard.

In the last 10 years, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided two cases involving naked licensing: Barcamerica International v. Tyfield Importers (9th Cir 2002) 289 F. 3d 589, and Freecyclesunnyvale v. The Freecycle Network (9th Cir 2010) 626 F.3d 509. Most lawyers regard naked licensing as a rarity likely to involve non-profit organizations (as Freecycle did) or very small companies.

In November 2008, the people of California voted for a proposition known as Marsy's Law. This law expanded victims' right to restitution under the California Constitution and converted their statutory right to counsel into a constitutional right.

A criminal defendant may have to contend with both criminal prosecution and a civil lawsuit by the victim. This common in driving under the influence cases.

Some tort cases involve a defendant who is also charged with a crime. The defendant in some of these cases has assets.

On November 5, 2010, Loyola Law School and the Office of Restorative Justice of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles sponsored a Victims' Right Conference. The Conference served as the inaugural event of the law school's Center for Restorative Justice (CRJ).