News, Events, & Insights

The tides of online privacy are changing quickly.  Businesses may be collecting more information than they need and sometimes sharing it without the informed consent of consumers.  The federal government intends to curb this by modifying current protection for consumers, offering more precise guidelines for businesses, and creating greater transparency in consumer-business relations.

A California appellate court in Holmes v. Petrovich ruled that an employee's emails sent to her attorney did not constitute "confidential communications between client and lawyer" when sent on a company computer.

The Federal Trade Commission issued a preliminary report that proposes a framework to balance the privacy interests of consumers wtih innovation that relies on consumer information to develop new products and services. 

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced today a special voluntary disclosure initiative designed to bring offshore money back into the U.S. tax system and help people with undisclosed income from hidden offshore accounts get current with their taxes. The new voluntary disclosure initiative will be available through Aug. 31, 2011.

The NLRB created significant uncertainty regarding the appropriate scope of social media policies when it filed a complaint that alleges a company violated the National Labor Relations Act by terminating an employee for posting negative commernts about her supervisor on the employee's personal Facebook page.

The SEC proposed rules which would require any company that uses "conflict minerals" from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to provide a detailed annual report to the SEC. 

The NLRB proposed a rule which would require all employers to post notices informing employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. 

In Uniloc v. Microsoft, an appeals court issued a decision that may change how infringement damages are calculated by precluding the use of the "25 percent rule of thumb" which has been used to calculate damages in most patent cases for the past fifteen years.  This decision marks an important step towards requiring patent plaintiffs to rigorously prove damages with facts connected to the value of the patented invention, and it is likely that future courts will more strictly scrutinize patent damages evidence. 

In his speech before the 23RD Annual Institute on Current Issues in International Taxation in Washington, DC on December 9, 2010, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said that the IRS is “seriously considering” a new partial amnesty program for taxpayers who report secret offshore bank accounts.