President Trump’s March 28 Executive Order requires every federal agency and Department to identify and potentially suspend, rescind, or relax federal regulations, policies, prior agency orders and guidelines that impede U.S. energy development or use. In this roundtable discussion, Sheila Harvey, Jeffrey Merrifield, Matthew Morrison and Andrew Weissman examine the implications of the Executive Order and how it could affect businesses in 2017 and beyond.
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On April 24, 2017, the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation voted unanimously to postpone for at least one year a bill that would temporarily ban California localities from taxing streaming video services.

Washington, DC Energy senior counsel Andrew Weissman told The Washington Post that legal professionals and industry experts, among others, are just beginning to grasp the scope of the March 28 order. According to Weissman, the order has far-reaching effects on “almost every environmental regulation that affects energy in any way,” in addition to non-environmental regulations.

Highly regulated products like alcohol, however, pose a special situation for online sales. Federal and state laws regulate the sale of alcohol in traditional brick-and-mortar stores, but these regulations also extend to the internet, and how these regulations are applied to an online environment is much more complicated. Each state has its own set of laws restricting the sale and purchase of alcohol, so depending on which state you live in, the restrictions differ.

Voting in local, state and national elections could be viewed as a rudimentary form of social media, by which voters share their views and preferences via selection of a candidate or party platform. The distance between this “old school” social media and its multi-headed modern form has shrunk thanks to the advent of electronic voting machines and online voting. But, as always, with the implementation of new technologies comes new risks.

While such a hiring freeze may not have an immediate impact on patent application pendency and/or examination quality, due to the relatively high attrition rate of the patent examining corps, the examination timeline and quality may be affected in the future. In particular, technologies having greater upfront value, including internet-based technologies and platforms, and clients relying on patent portfolios for valuation will be most acutely impacted

Earlier this year, European law makers approved important amendments to the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Directive that would implement new rules to combat money-laundering, terrorism financing and tax evasion.

“We will follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American.” While world leaders are pondering what these words from President Trump’s Inaugural Address mean for international trade, a different question looms for U.S. Government contractors—what is on the horizon as far as the Buy American Act and similar protectionist regulations?

Fashion retailers need to be vigilant to prevent human rights abuses in their supply chains whilst complying with their legal obligations.

If a computer program generates a creative work—be it a song, book or other creation—is there a copyright to be owned? If so, who owns and gets to collect on the copyright?

The cybersecurity ramifications of the Internet of Things (IoT) are perhaps nowhere more crucial--potentially a matter of life and death, in fact--than in the realm of medical devices. Until recent times, a potential hack of the data-sharing that is a hallmark of the IoT raised far more privacy concerns than actual health risks. However, as medical devices begin to evolve and make use of the connectivity of the IoT, this balance may change.