UnifiedOnline Inc fka UOIP

[shajandr]

That is many millions of $$$ of billing right there. I wood estimate higher, butt I am used to deep pockets corporate clients where it s nott unusual to see billings of up to $10M/month (or more!) as trial approaches and occurs. Butt then we are dealng with teams of lawyers each working 1418 hours per day at trial - and they are much longer than three days. Last one (AAA/IADR arbitration) was ~4 weeks or trial days spread ~OUTT over three months.

The hotel bill at the Fairmont in Chicago was >$550,000 for our squad and witnesses (and some work suites - we basically had an entire floor and keep two the work suites during the entire three months so we did nott have to move the equipment and reinstall the IT stuph each time we came back - copiers, shelving for binders and documents, a small bindery, graphics stuph, networked computers, file cabinets, etc. - a war room plus a document/graphics production suite.

The UOIP nonsense is much, much cheaper - only a handful of lawyers and mebbe a cupple of paralegals, a graphics guru or two, a typist/secretary or two, a gopher (to get whatever needs to be gotten - food at all hours, Starbust drinks, office supplies, or whatever. Our gopher was a dude from Brasil named Paolo and he was great! He could find great take~OUTT food even at 3 or 4 AM. He worked hard.

So, ballparkimetrically, downgrading the estimate for the much simpler case and shorter trial of the CBV case (alone) - I would guesstimate the total budgets for all the parties (nott including Fingerling because he is nott invited) from now to the trial date (whenever that actually happens) should sum to the $10-15M range - all-in (travel food, witness expenses, experts, depos, pretrial motions practice, and legal bills) as this is a straightforward case.

Of course, then there will be appeals - even motion ruling appeals - and that uses special appellate lawyers. But while this can occur pre-trial, let us neglect the appeals costs and push them off into the future.

That is a real lowball estimate for a three-way complex (kinda sorta) litgation basically about contracts - no IP.

I know of one IP case where one single party was spending $24M a quarter and at that time they were nowhere close to a trial. Butt CBV v. World is nott one of those very complex, IP bett-the-company litigations where all gloves are off and virtually all suggestions made to the client are accepted and approved. Butt it is an example of how fast munny is burned in complex business litigation at the Federal level. It is mind-blowing.

With the schedule propounded by Judge Norieka in the CBV v. World case, a shit-ton of spending will occur in the next year or so. I doubt that CBV and Billy have an idea how much spending they face - DEIRDRE prolly has a taste of it from the arbitration butt Billy is paying from the UOIP small bagg or remaining chump coins and GTFOH shekels so he may nott worry about the costs because he is nott footing the bill, UOIP/Chanboned is.

The costs are highly variable - if you have a bunch of experts and percipient witnesses (and corporate representative witnesses) and you are away living in hotel rooms for weeks, the tab will be jaw-droppingly huge,

I have some inside baseball info for Akiva re: selection of arbitration venues when drafting agreements with ex-USA counterparties (or your own client). In a nutshell, lawyers are often free to suggest/pick the arbitration venue should disputes arise during performance of the contract the lawyers are drafting. Often on disputes within the USA, the selection of controlling state law and court venue is pretty pro forma. Butt when you are doing biggass multi-billion US Dollar agreements, the lawyers should select arbitration venues to accomodate the US-domiciled company and the foreign-domiciled counterparty and pick a location mutually CONvenient for both and someplace where the drafting lawyers would like to be.

For arbitrations and nott court trials. Japanese companies are happy to designate Hawaii usually (they love their golf!). Eurasian companies will generally be OK with an EU location - Paris or more usually London/UK because (1) the underlying contract is likely written in English, and (2) French lawyers suck - they just do - I have nott found a single Cabinet in France with lawyers I think well of or would trust. Sometimes Geneva will sail if you object that an EU-domiciled company should nott gett homefield advantage in an EU country, so Suisseland (nott a member of the EU) is a good compromise unless the counterparty is Roche, Novartis, or any of the big Suisse pharma companies.

What sucks is getting a USA arbitration in Chicago from November thru early March, as my last one did. And it was one of the colder winters in Chicago. Fortunately the walk from the Fairmont to the AAA offices on Michigan Avenue can be traversed mostly underground in the underground shopping/food court area of the Aon building. So you have one block of cold walking to get to the external dwn escalator to gett you to the warm underground, then a couple/few blocks in the underground (which also has a same-day cobbler shop which was good because had brought only one pair of Allen Edmonds and the sole wore a hole, so the cobbler resoled by shoes and I picked them up next morning on my way to the AAA/IADR building).

Parties to the arbitration must pay the AAA for the arbitrators (who are lawyers and with higher billing rates), their travel and expenses, and rent the AAA rooms for the arb trial AND war room(s) for each party to break ~OUTT to during recesses. In the case I reference above, the USA portion fof the IP dispute was done in Chicago, and the international portion was done at IADR in NYC (fortunately during the nice NY cool autumn - best time in New York!). The Fairmont in Chicago is great, the Manhattan hotels within walking distance of the IADR (upper west of Midtown (8th/9th and RC the 50s - it was near the old Carnegie deli which you pass on the way - butt this may have changed as Carnegie was closed and IIRC the IADR was planning a move within Manhattan).

Bottom line and Executive Summary: These litigations cost bongo bucks!