Technology

Expert Analysis

• Series

  Pursuing Wellness: Steps Toward A Supportive Firm Culture

  

  As an early advocate of the American Bar Association's year-old well-being pledge, we launched an integrated program to create and sustain a supportive workplace culture with initiatives focused on raising mental health awareness, embracing creativity and giving back to the community, says Casey Ryan at Reed Smith.

• Change In TCPA Compliance Is On The Horizon

  

  With the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act making its way through Congress and Federal Communications Commission autodialer guidance pending, businesses should expect some much-needed clarity regarding compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, say David Carpenter and Kelley Barnaby of Alston & Bird.

• Stats Show Cannabis Patents Are Underutilized

  

  Recent case law developments and analysis of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office data reveal that the legal status of cannabis in the U.S. may have depressed inventing vis-a-vis Canada and that design patents are a missed opportunity for cannabis companies, says Joshua Glucoft of Irell & Manella. 

• CFIUS Risk Review Rules May Draw Attention To US Biotech

  

  The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States' critical technologies pilot program has had relatively minor impact on the U.S. biotech industry in the last year, but proposed rules unleashed by the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act will soon reshape the relationship between the government and the biotech industry, says Richard Matheny of Goodwin.

• Series

  Pursuing Wellness: Mental Health Education As A Firm Priority

  

  Our firm drives a holistic concept of well-being through educational opportunities, such as a series of expert-led workshops intended to address mental health and substance abuse issues that we vowed to fight when we signed the American Bar Association's well-being pledge one year ago, says Krista Logelin at Morgan Lewis.

• 8 Takeaways From CFIUS' Proposed Risk Review Rules

  

  The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ draft regulations implementing the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act seem to focus on specific national security concerns, as opposed to taking a broader approach, which means they are significantly more complex than the pre-FIRRMA regime, say Christian Davis and Thor Petersen of Akin Gump.

• Drone Deliveries Face Technological, Legal Hurdles

  

  After years of anticipation, a handful of companies are getting closer to delivering packages in the United States by drone — but navigational and safety technologies are still maturing, and security, privacy and jurisdictional questions remain, says Caroline Gentry of Porter Wright.

• Must Inventors Be Humans? An Active Debate Over AI Patents

  

  With the first international patents naming artificially intelligent algorithms as inventors filed this summer, and with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s query into whether inventorship laws and regulations need revising, the debate over AI is testing the boundaries of patent laws in the U.S. and elsewhere, says Christian Mammen of Womble Bond.

• Proposed Cloud Tax Regs Foggy On Sourcing

  

  The U.S. Treasury Department's recently proposed regulations regarding the classification of cloud and digital content transactions for international tax purposes are sorely overdue. However, some of the proposed sourcing rules have proven to be quite controversial, say Edward Tanenbaum and Stefanie Kavanagh of Alston & Bird.

• Series

  Pursuing Wellness: A Firm's Work With Mental Health Experts

  

  Signing the American Bar Association's well-being pledge last year was a natural progression of our firm's commitment to employee wellness, which has included developing partnerships with professionals in the mental health space to provide customized programming to firm attorneys and staff, say Annette Sciallo and Mark Goldberg at Latham.

• SEPs In The Wake Of Qualcomm: 4 Enforcement Issues

  

  As demonstrated by recent court decisions such as Federal Trade Commission v. Qualcomm, standard-essential patent infringement suits are hardly straightforward. But these cases as well as statements from government agencies reveal key factors that SEP holders should keep in mind when seeking to enforce their patents, say attorneys at Sterne Kessler.

• FTC Settlement Over COPPA Will Change YouTube's Biz Model

  

  While the $170 million fine received most of the headlines, the recent settlement of the Federal Trade Commission and New York attorney general with Google and YouTube includes provisions that ultimately could expose content creators and channel owners to liability under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, says Allison Fitzpatrick of Davis & Gilbert.

• Series

  Pursuing Wellness: When A Firm Brings Counseling On Site

  

  One year ago, our firm signed the American Bar Association's well-being pledge and embraced a commitment to providing on-site behavioral health resources, which has since become a key aspect of our well-being program, say Meg Meserole and Kimberly Merkel at Akin Gump.

• Series

  Pursuing Wellness: Inside A Firm Meditation Program

  

  After our firm signed the American Bar Association’s well-being pledge one year ago, we launched two key programs that included weekly meditation sessions and monthly on-site chair massages to help people address both the mental and physical aspects of working at a law firm, says Marci Eisenstein at Schiff Hardin.

• Calif. Guidelines Advance Telehealth For Medicaid Patients

  

  Although the California Department of Health Care Services' updated guidelines expanding telemedicine reimbursement have some shortcomings, they open new channels of care for many Medicaid beneficiaries and raise intriguing prospects for similar programs across the country, say Harsh Parikh and Jill Gordon of Nixon Peabody.