June 14, 2019, Cov Africa

Yet another U.S. regulator is entering the foreign corruption space. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is a civil agency that oversees commodity and derivatives markets in the United States. It enforces the Commodity Exchange Act, a set of statutes that are enforced criminally by the U.S. Department of Justice. The CFTC has authority to impose...… ...

June 14, 2019, Inside Tech Media

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) held its Artificial Intelligence: Intellectual Property Policy Considerations conference on January 31, 2019. The conference featured six panels of speakers, including policy makers, academics, and practitioners from Canada, China, Europe, Japan, and the United States. As stated by USPTO Director Iancu during his ...

June 14, 2019, Inside Privacy

As policymakers weigh the implications of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and the Internet of Things (“IoT”), members of Congress have introduced a handful of measures focusing on Government support for and adoption of these emerging technologies. In May, Senators Deb Fischer (R-NE), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) reintroduced ...

June 14, 2019

LONDON—The American Lawyer and Legal Week have named Covington its Transatlantic Arbitration Team of the Year. The award focuses on a single case that involved significant lawyering on both sides of the Atlantic and that demonstrated excellence in legal expertise and innovation, project management skills, and teamwork. The publications recognized Covington for ...

June 14, 2019, Government Contracting Law Report

June 13, 2019, Tax Withholding & Reporting Blog

Last week, Kimberly Schoenbacher, the Acting Director of the LB&I Foreign Payments Practice (“FPP”), sent a message to taxpayers who may be noncompliant with Chapter 3 and FATCA withholding and reporting: the IRS is actively honing in on Form 1042 nonfilers, Form 1042 failures, and Forms 1042 and 1042-S that do not reconcile. Schoenbacher remarked...… Continue ...

June 13, 2019, Global Policy Watch

This week, Congress took an important step forward to protect the benefits of retirees in multiemployer pension plans facing insolvency.  On Tuesday, June 11, 2019, the House Committee on Education and Labor marked-up the Rehabilitation for Multiemployer Pensions Act (H.R. 397), better known as the “Butch Lewis Act.”  Among other things, the bill would ...

June 13, 2019, Inside Privacy

On June 13, 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China (“CAC”) issued the draft Measures on Security Assessment of the Cross-border Transfer of Personal Information (“Draft Measures”) for public comment. (The official Chinese version of the Draft Measures is available here, and an unofficial English translation is available here.) The comment period ends on ...

June 12, 2019, Inside Energy & Environment

On June 11, 2019, President Trump issued an Executive Order that would require the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration—the three main agencies with regulatory authority over genetically-engineered (“GE”) plants and animals in the United States—to revise their regulations governing GE organisms.  ...

June 12, 2019, Cov Financial Services

On June 7, 2019, 26 Democratic senators sent a letter to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the “Bureau”) Director Kathleen Kraninger criticizing the Bureau’s proposed rule to modify Regulation F under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.  As we have previously discussed, the Bureau released its long-anticipated proposed rule on May 7, 2019.  Director ...