Commercial banks, investment banks, brokerages, and other financial institutions spend an inordinate amount of time on due diligence: researching a potential debtor’s financial history and quantifying the amount of risk of a particular investment or loan. Much of this diligence can be automated.

There are hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies filed every year. Banks and other financiers use Docket Alarm to research personal and commercial bankruptcy records. Financial institutions can easily see if a potential corporate customer is solvent or has declared bankruptcy in the past. Using Docket Alarm’s API, searches can be automated, leading to an enormous savings in efficiency over manual searching.

In addition to bankruptcies, Docket Alarm automates access to court recordsinvolving your clients' and debtors’ litigation.

Back in February of 2014, German sportswear giant Adidas filed a patent infringement suit against competitor Under Armour, Inc. in United States District Court for the District of Delaware.

Adidas accused Under Armour and its newly acquired fitness tracker subsidiary, MapMyFitness, Inc., of infringing ten of its patents.

Terms and connectors searching allow users to string together multiple complex queries. Say you are searching for §112 issues in a patent case. You may search for “written description invalidity” to find relevant information. However, this search will return any result that uses those three words. By using terms and connectors, you can narrow your query: (written w/3 description) w/10 invalidity. This query indicates that you are looking for results where the word “description” appears within three words of “written”, and “invalidity” appears within ten words of that combination.

Terms and connectors searching is also helpful in finding cases whose characteristics match your own.

50 Cent’s moniker has ceased being figurative— the rapper and business mogul has filed for bankruptcy in Connecticut’s Bankruptcy Court.

Curtis James Jackson III, known by his stage name “50 Cent” or “Fiddy”, started his career as a successful rap artist, rising to the top of the charts and taking in millions of dollars in royalties annually.

On July 26, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that states must recognize same-sex marriage. The long awaited decision was 5-4, with Justice Kennedy casting the swing vote in favor of upholding same-sex unions. In his opinion for the majority, Kennedy wrote:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.

Docket Alarm’s comprehensive platform has many tools to help you keep track of companies and their legal affairs. For example, Docket Alarm’s email alert tool helps keep you informed of the latest litigation developments involving a specific company. When a new lawsuit is filed that the company is a party to, or when there is a new development in an existing case involving that company, an update will be sent right to your inbox.

To create an email alert for a particular company, simply enter the company’s name in Docket Alarm’s Federal Court Case Alert Tool and click on the “View New Lawsuits” button.

In addition to lawyers and professionals, regular citizens can benefit from having access to Docket Alarm’s legal research platform to uncover litigation history and stay informed of the latest lawsuits and cases. Here are four ways the public can use Docket Alarm to their benefit.

1. Conduct Due Diligence

Citizens can use Docket Alarm to research potential employers or business partners.

Creating a parody of a well-recognized brand is a popular way to captivate the public, à la the “Dumb Starbucks” phenomenon that took the internet by storm last year and had LA residents lining up around the block for a cup of “dumb coffee.”

But is this type of witty commentary legal? Well, as any lawyer will tell you, it depends.

Parody can be raised as a defense to a trademark or copyright infringement lawsuit.

In the News: Docket Alarm is excited to announce that we have been selected as a finalist in Legaltech News’ Innovation Awards for Best Research Product! The award is in recognition of outstanding achievement by legal professionals in their use of technology.

Know Your PTAB Judges: Meet PTAB Judge Trevor Jefferson

In this installment of Docket Alarm’s Know Your PTAB Judge newsletter, Docket Alarm is proud to feature Administrative Patent Judge Trevor Jefferson.

Lenders can join the growing ranks of financial professionals utilizing Docket Alarm to enhance their businesses. Not merely for attorneys, Docket Alarm’s search and analytics platform help lenders easily conduct due diligence and even automate due diligence tasks. This is most beneficial when information on a potential borrower is scarce.

Data points from Docket Alarm can be used to evaluate the level of risk associated with lending to certain borrowers, industries, and geographical areas.

Last week, a Pennsylvania jury handed down one of the first patent infringement verdicts involving drones. Drone Technologies Inc. filed suit against France-based Parrot SA for infringement on two of their patents, U.S. Patents 7,584,071 and 8,106,748.

Parrot is a well-known drone manufacturing company, focusing primarily on the toy and hobby market.

The jury ruled in favor of Drone Technologies Inc., granting $7.8 million in damages.

Professionals use Docket Alarm to conduct background checks on potential clients, partners, investments, and more. Docket Alarm can identify red flags, like past or pending federal litigation, involvement in bankruptcy proceedings, and even disputes over IP assets.

While you can search for a company’s background information on Docket Alarm’s robust search platform, the real utility is in Docket Alarm’s ability to automate these types of checks. Using Docket Alarm’s API (Application Programming Interface), you can set up recurring background checks on particular entities or individuals.

Gone are the days of Google searching to see the latest Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions. Instead of searching for decisions, some new, some outdated, Docket Alarm makes it easy to view every new decision published by the PTAB in one place.

Docket Alarm’s dedicated PTAB orders and decisions page is organized by decision type, and includes categories like final written decision, petition institution, motion to terminate, motion for supplemental information, and more.

For example, to view all recent PTAB Motions for Joinder, simply select the category.

More than just a legal research engine, Docket Alarm is a multifaceted analytics platform and source database that journalists, day traders, and other professionals can utilize to their advantage.

Instead of continuously searching disorganized databases, court dockets, and PACER, journalists can use Docket Alarm’s user-friendly search tool to see the latest court cases involving Fortune 500 companies, tech startups, and other entities. Then, using Docket Alarm’s Federal Court casealert tool, reporters can track developments related to specific parties and tech centers in order to stay up-to-date on the latest legal and business news.