Member Articles

The U.S. General Services Administration recently added Green Globes as an additional third-party green building certification system for federal government construction projects. With this addition, many are now asking about the difference between Green Globes and LEED.   Green Globes has emerged, in some parts of the U.S., as a rival building option to the more well-known Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (“LEED”) system ...

In Texas, tenants who are obligated to reimburse property owners for property taxes have a right to protest the appraised value of the property if the property owner does not file a protest relating to the property. To facilitate this right, the Texas legislature enacted a law (Section 41.413 of the Tax Code) that requires the property owner to give all such tenants a copy of the notice of appraised value received by the property owner within 10 days of receiving the notice ...

You may already be aware of a new federal law called the Corporate Transparency Act (the CTA), which became effective on January 1, 2024.  The CTA was enacted as part of the National Defense Authorization Act and mandates that certain business entities (“Reporting Companies”) report identifying information to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) ...

In our previous articles (part one, part two and part three), we discussed ways in which trademarks are maintained and protected through filings that are mandatory and which filings would result in abandonment or cancellation if not timely submitted.   There are also optional filings a trademark owner can take advantage of to optimize and secure its rights under a U.S. trademark registration. An Affidavit of Incontestability Under Section 15 is one such method ...

Yuppies – do they confuse you? Late last year, the South African Supreme Court of Appeal (“SCA”) handed down an important trade mark judgment in Yuppiechef Holdings (Pty) Ltd v Yuppie Gadgets Holdings (Pty) Ltd. The case dealt with that thorny issue that bedevils so many trade mark cases – confusing similarity. The facts were fairly straightforward. Yuppiechef is an online retail business that specialises in kitchen and household goods ...