Practitioner Contributions

On February 12, President Obama signed an Executive Order (“the Order”) mandating increased efforts to improve the nation’s cybersecurity. 1 On the same day, the President signed Presidential Decision Directive 21, Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience (“the Presidential Directive”).

Commercial activity of the type often drawing antitrust scrutiny is rapidly increasing in the area of health information technology (HIT).

The term HIT captures a wide range of products and services, including patient data organization and storage, payment tools, outcomes databases, and many others.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is poised to consider final rules governing swap execution facilities,1 or SEFs, a new entity created by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. SEFs, as defined by Congress, are clearly distinct from vertically-integrated futures exchanges, and are intended to compete with other SEFs to execute swaps transactions for customers.

By David J. Levine and Pamela D. Walther, McDermott, Will & Emery A number of recent trade actions involving renewable energy, particularly in the solar sector, are complicating the business landscape domestically and globally for a wide range of entities operating in these industries. In light of finite demand and increasing global production capacity of renewable [...]

By Richard Falek, Elizabeth Cate, and Brandon Duke, Winston & Strawn LLP A recent complaint filed by the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), challenging the acquisition of PowerReviews, Inc. by Bazaarvoice, Inc., should serve as a cautionary tale for all parties contemplating a transaction, regardless of the size of the transaction and the reporting thresholds set in [...]

By Jayne Navarre The debate over whether or not law firms and lawyers should use social media is over—thank you very much. In fact, gains in adoption of the medium are making social business an imperative for everyone from Main Street to Madison Avenue. However, we’re not at the pinnacle yet: There still remains a [...]

By James G. Snell and Carlos P. Mino TCPA Filings under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act are on the rise, say attorneys James G. Snell and Carlos P. Mino in this BNA Insight. The authors advise companies to guard against these claims—and possible multimillion dollar judgments—by reviewing policies and practices to ensure that they do [...]

By Susan Millington Campbell and John Turrettini NEW YORK FRACKING New York’s long political debate over whether to permit extraction of the state’s natural gas reserves via the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, may be finally coming to an end. The state is under a Feb. 27 deadline to issue final rules on fracking. [...]

By Jason de Bretteville, Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth PC With all the rhetoric surrounding recent insider trading enforcement actions, it is easy to forget that not all trades on the basis of material, nonpublic information are inherently wrongful, much less illegal. In fact, some regulators and much of the general public appear to have [...]

By Steven J. Cernak, Gregory L. Curtner, and Kimberly K. Kefalas, Schiff Hardin LLP A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in September 2012 upheld a jury verdict against Eaton Corporation and in favor of ZF Meritor LLC and Meritor Transmission Corp. ZF Meritor LLC (ZFM) and Meritor Transmission Corp. [...]

By Stephen J. Shapiro and Aaron J. Fickes, Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP  In the widely-watched case of Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. v. Vulcan Materials Co., No. 254-2012 (Del. July 10, 2012), the Supreme Court of Delaware upheld the Chancery Court’s ruling that temporarily enjoined Martin Marietta from engaging in a hostile takeover of Vulcan. [...]

By Claudia M. Vetesi, Morrison & Foerster LLP  Chances are you’ve never heard of the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. So, you might be surprised to learn that the NAD is an independent self-regulatory body devoted to issues regarding truth and accuracy in national advertising in general, and comparative [...]

On election day 2012, Colorado1 and Washington2 became the first states in the nation to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. The passage of these laws raises questions about employers’ ability to enforce company drug testing policies and limit marijuana use outside the workplace. Employers have already been caught between diametrically opposed laws when dealing with employees who use medical marijuana, in accordance with state law, but fail company drug tests for marijuana, an illegal drug under federal law.

By Heather L. Traeger, Theodore W. Kassinger, and Zachary D. Kaufman, O’Melveny & Myers LLP Entrepreneurs face challenges raising capital to fund the development of new ideas in the United States because of regulatory constraints, primarily those imposed by the Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”). Although avenues exist for entrepreneurs to seek financing, funders typically hold the purse strings [...]

By Irina Shestakova and Daniel Robyn, Baker & McKenzie LLP While setting up a corporation or a limited liability company (LLC) in Delaware or any other U.S. state is straightforward, fast, and relatively inexpensive, U.S. companies should be aware that establishing a registered presence (subsidiary, branch, representative office) abroad may, depending on the jurisdiction, be burdensome, [...]

By James B. Moorhead, Steptoe & Johnson LLP The Susan G. Komen Foundation is struggling one year after its January 2012 initial decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood. The New York Times reports that Komen’s signature Race for the Cure attracted 19 percent fewer participants through October 2012 than in the same period the previous [...]

By Keith B. Walker, Cox, Castle & Nicholson  Most notable among the changes made to the Green Chemistry proposal, the number Chemicals of Concern (COCs) to be regulated in Priority Products, to be designated by DTSC, has been reduced from over 3,000 chemicals (as previously anticipated) to approximately 1,200. Also, possibly in response to comments from [...]

By Mara Leventhal,  Gregory P Joseph Law Offices LLC While New York law outlining the contours of director independence is somewhat less robust than the precedents that inform similar analyses under Delaware law, the fact that New York statutes and case law address circumstances that a court should consider in determining a director’s interest in [...]

By James Michael (Mike) Walls, Carlton Fields Real World Impact of Class Actions for Technical Violations of Consumer Protection Laws Mama Mia, a Florida restaurant, accepts credit cards as payment for meals. A customer provides his credit card to pay for his meal and receives a receipt from the restaurant. The receipt displays the customer’s [...]

By Adrian Emch, Hogan Lovells International LLP The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has started 2013 with a bang. On 4 January 2013, it announced that it had imposed sanctions of close to $56 million on six liquid crystal display (LCD) makers from Korea and Taiwan, accusing the companies of illegal price-fixing. These sanctions set [...]