Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s first U.S. Supreme Court term will be heavy on business cases, as companies aim to rebound after a year of high court setbacks.

The nine-month term that started today will affect the fate of imprisoned former Hollinger International Inc. Chairman Conrad Black, the accounting oversight board set up by the Sarbanes-Oxley law and the sales of professional football team caps. The justices also will consider limiting investor lawsuits and making it harder to get a patent covering business methods.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is seeking to avoid a repeat of the 2008-09 term, perhaps the Washington-based trade group’s worst in a decade. The court allowed more lawsuits against drugmakers, tobacco companies and banks and backed out of a case that might have meant stricter limits on punitive damages.

“The business community is anxious to see if the losses of last term were aberrations,” said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington lawyer at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and the creator of the Scotusblog Web site, which tracks the court.

The court opened its term today by rejecting about 2,000 appeals, including one from Joseph Nacchio, the former Qwest Communications International Inc. chief executive officer convicted of selling company stock based on inside information. The justices also turned away an Obama administration bid to collect an estimated $20 billion in royalties from Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and other oil and gas companies.

Reversing the Trend

Whether companies can reverse the trend in business cases will depend in part on how much deference the court affords the Obama administration, which is urging the justices to allow more investor lawsuits. The Bush administration argued against investors in five straight high court cases, winning all five.

In a case involving Chicago-based Harris Associates LP and its Oakmark mutual funds, the Obama administration argues that mutual-fund managers can be sued for charging excessive fees even if they didn’t deceive the fund’s directors. Harris and business groups argue that courts generally should let the marketplace set fee levels, not the legal system.

Although that case revolves around the interpretation of the 1940 Investment Company Act, the outcome may turn as much on policy questions as statutory language.

The case “could require the Supreme Court to posit its own economic theory of the market,” said Chris Brummer, a securities law professor at Georgetown University in Washington. “How efficient are markets in effect at regulating themselves?”

Merck Case

The administration also may back shareholders in a clash over deadlines for fraud suits involving Merck & Co., based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Investors say the company deceived them about the risks posed by its Vioxx painkiller, which was pulled from the market in 2004 because of links to heart attacks and strokes.

Merck, which will become the second-largest U.S. pharmaceutical company when it completes its $41.1 billion purchase of Kenilworth, New Jersey-based Schering-Plough Corp., argues that the shareholders waited too long to file their suit. The company’s appeal turns on the starting date for the two-year window that investors are given to file some types of federal securities lawsuits.

Patent Dispute

The patent case has ramifications for the software, biotechnology and financial services industries. The dispute will mark the first time since 1981 the court has ruled on the types of inventions that are patentable. An appeals court excluded some innovations that don’t have a physical component.

The case concerns a bid to patent a way to buy or sell energy at a fixed price based on the expected weather. Companies, trade organizations and other outside groups have submitted more than 45 briefs, signaling wide interest.

The case looms as a “blockbuster” that will resolve a “very, very foundational question for patents,” said Cliff Sloan, a Washington lawyer at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP and an expert in intellectual property law.

Black, the former Hollinger executive, was accused by prosecutors of stealing $6.1 million from the Toronto-based company. He was convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison.

His case turns on a favorite prosecutorial tool in white- collar crime cases, a provision that covers mail and wire fraud schemes to “deprive another of the intangible right to honest services.”

Economic Harm

Black says the provision shouldn’t apply in the private sector unless the defendant intended to impose economic harm on a company or other entity entitled to those “honest services.”

By its terms, the honest services provision could apply to anyone who uses a company phone to make a personal call, says Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown law professor.

“This theory of honest services seems a little strange, but it’s used all the time,” O’Sullivan said. “Why? Because it’s easy.”

In the apparel case, the question is how much of a shield professional sports leagues should have from antitrust suits. The justices will decide whether the National Football League, headquartered in New York, and its teams must face claims by a company that lost its right to sell caps with team logos when the league struck an exclusive agreement for the Reebok brand of Herzogenaurach, Germany-based Adidas AG, the world’s second- largest sporting goods maker.

Rights to Logos

The NFL contends that, under the antitrust laws, its teams can sell rights to their logos as a group, rather than on a squad-by-squad basis.

The Sarbanes-Oxley case might produce a far-reaching constitutional ruling. The case centers on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a private entity whose members are appointed by the Securities and Exchange Commission to be the accounting industry’s watchdog.

The court will decide whether the measure violates the constitutional provision that lets the president appoint and supervise executive branch officials. The law is being challenged by Beckstead and Watts LLP, a Las Vegas-area accounting firm, and the Free Enterprise Fund in Washington, which advocates smaller government.

A decision that the PCAOB is unconstitutional might prod Congress to revisit the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law and restructure the board.

More broadly, such a ruling could raise questions about the so-called fourth branch of government - the independent agencies including the SEC that the Supreme Court first upheld in 1935.

“That would have a huge impact on the regulatory apparatus,” Sloan said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 5, 2009 14:23 EDT