Expert Analysis

• Series

  Playing Magic: The Gathering Makes Me a Better Lawyer

  

  The competitive card game Magic: The Gathering offers me a training ground for the strategic thinking skills crucial to litigation, challenging me to adapt to oft-updated rules, analyze text as complicated as any statute and anticipate my opponent’s next moves, says Christopher Smith at Lash Goldberg.

• What's At Stake For Employers In Fight Over Visa Pause

  

  For employers that rely on foreign talent, the Trump administration’s suspension of immigrant visa issuance for the nationals of 75 countries is creating practical problems, and a recently filed lawsuit challenging the pause could determine whether consular processing, for some, ceases to be an individualized process, says attorney Lisa Eisenberg.

• How Banks And Fintechs Can Build COPPA-Ready Youth Apps

  

  Recent Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and state law activity expanding children's data protections underscore compliance considerations for bank-fintech partnerships offering digital financial tech products for youth, including age-gating, data minimization and parental control, says Erin Illman at Bradley Arant.

• Fed. Circ. In March: IPR And The Limits Of Retroactivity

  

  The Federal Circuit recently ruled in Implicit v. Sonos that even though the clever retroactive correction of two invalidated patents theoretically should have changed the outcome of the inter partes review, the patentee had forfeited the right to rely on the correction — which is interesting for several reasons, say attorneys at Knobbe Martens.

• Improving Well-Being In Law, 10 Years After Landmark Study

  

  An important 2016 study revealed significant substance abuse and mental health issues among lawyers, and while the findings helped normalize the conversation around these topics, a decade later, structural change is still needed, says Denise Robinson at PLI.

• Initial Virginia AG Actions Signal Focus On Multistate Efforts

  

  Now that Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones has reached the 100-day mark in office, his first set of actions reveals a clear preference for coalition with regional and national counterparts, which means the primary risk for businesses is no longer just the fact of enforcement, but the speed at which investigations can escalate, says Lauren Cooper at Hogan Lovells.

• Small And Midsize Business Finance Faces More State Regs

  

  Recent developments in state credit disclosure, consumer debt collection, and lender licensing and registration requirements suggest that companies extending financing to small and midsize businesses are likely to encounter a significantly more stringent legal climate moving forward, say attorneys at Manatt.

• Structuring Bank-Fintech Ties To Avert Risk

  

  Bank-fintech relationships that can hold up to recent increased scrutiny must take into account a broad swath of structuring considerations including due diligence, compliance, documentation, and planning for a potential wind-down and termination, say attorneys at Nelson Mullins.

• High Court 'Skinny Label' Case Will Matter To Tech Litigators

  

  Hikma v. Amarin, set for oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, has potential to affect not just generic drug label-based evidence in patent cases, but also how technology inducement cases are presented and proven, says attorney Abdul Abdullahi.

• Opinion

  New Legislation May Be Necessary To Fix Flawed Cox Ruling

  

  The U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Cox v. Sony erroneously limited the doctrine of contributory copyright infringement and effectively eliminated such liability for internet service providers, and the most viable option to remedy the damage is to codify the pre-Cox common law of contributory copyright infringement, says Michael Cicero at Mavacy.

• What We Did And Didn't Learn From DOJ's 1st Illegal DEI Deal

  

  IBM's recent $17 million deal with the U.S. Department of Justice marks the first resolved False Claims Act enforcement action under the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, and while it validates the core of the government's FCA antidiscrimination enforcement road map, it leaves its most aggressive theories untested, say attorneys at Nutter.

• What Cos. Must Know As Energy Star Shifts To DOE Oversight

  

  Congress saved the Energy Star program last year despite the Trump administration's attempt to defund it — but as its management shifts from one federal agency to another, industry participants need to track what's changing to stay abreast of compliance obligations, say attorneys at HWG.

• GHG Endangerment Finding Repeal Brings New Legal Risks

  

  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2009 determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare anchored a matrix of regulation across multiple sectors — and the recent repeal of that finding has fundamentally destabilized the legal landscape governing industrial emissions, corporate liability and climate-related risk management, says Tanya Nesbitt at Thompson Hine.

• OFAC Signals Sanctions Diligence Can't Stop At 50% Rule

  

  Recent guidance from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, along with several enforcement actions looking beyond the 50% formal ownership requirement, sends a clear message that sanctions due diligence must consider a variety of factors, including degree of control, practice of actual dealings and the involvement of proxies, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.

• New FCC Router Rule Signals Shifting Supply Chain Approach

  

  The Federal Communications Commission's recent addition of consumer-grade routers newly produced outside of the U.S. to its covered list marks another notable expansion of the Trump administration's supply chain risk regulation and national security policy, directly affecting manufacturers, carriers and service providers, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.