In October 2022, the Virginia Supreme Court decided the case of Hawkins v. Town of South Hill (view the opinion here), which fundamentally alters 40 years of precedent in the Commonwealth concerning what is considered confidential and not subject to production in response to a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request. Earlier this month, the Circuit Court issued its decision on remand in light of the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision in Hawkins ...
Effective at noon today, May 29, 2020, Virginia Governor Northam's Executive Order 63 went into effect, requiring face coverings to be worn in certain circumstances. Specifically, a face covering is required for individuals aged ten and older when "entering, exiting, traveling through, and spending time inside" the following categories of businesses: All retail. Food and beverage, but only when reopened for indoor dining. Personal care/grooming - i.e ...
On March 2, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed the Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA or law) into law. This makes Virginia the second state, behind California, to adopt a comprehensive consumer data privacy law. Like the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the CDPA creates a number of privacy obligations for businesses and gives Virginia consumers more control over their personal data. The CDPA takes effect on Jan ...
‘Spear Tackle’ Case When Brian O’Driscoll was lifted and dropped unceremoniously by All Blacks Keven Mealamu and Tana Umaga in the first Lions test the issue of spear tackling became a hotly debated topic. Spear tackles have been in the news before and a recent Australian case involving a spear tackle in a rugby league match has reignited the debate on when the courts should intervene regarding violence in sport ...
The Vietnamese Government issued the first-ever comprehensive legal framework on personal data for the country in the form of Decree No. 13/2023/ND-CP dated 17 April 2023, on personal data protection (“DPD”). The DPD, which will take effect from 1 July 2023, applies to agencies, organizations and individuals that are involved in the collection and processing of personal data ...
On 16 June 2022, the Vietnamese National Assembly officially approved the amended Intellectual Property Law (“Amended IP Law”). This marks the third time the Vietnamese IP Law has been amended and supplemented since its promulgation in 2005. Its latest update contains revisions and supplements more than 100 articles, marking the most expansive overhaul of this law to date ...
Many companies are currently facing challenges in relation to the GDPR compliance of their video surveillance. Main issues in this respect are questions related to transparency requirements and information notices, the need for a data protection impact assessment as well as questions concerning retention requirements and retention periods. The German Federal Labor Court (BAG) has recently commented on the admissible storage duration of lawful video recordings ...
You’ve heard of Victoria’s Secret, right! The US company is, of course, a well-known purveyor of lingerie, a product for which there is clearly a great deal of demand: Victoria’s Secret has some 1 000 stores throughout the world, and its turnover in 2010 was an impressive US$5.5 billion. In 2012 Victoria’s Secret lodged an objection to a domain name registration for www.victoriassecrets.com ...
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority has notified Stortinget of an infringement fine of two million kroner and imposed an infringement fine of four million kroner on Østre Toten municipality. In both cases, the Authority emphasizes that it is a clear management responsibility to secure the business against such attacks, and that two-factor authentication, awareness-raising and an appropriate risk and vulnerability analysis are key measures ...
As we take stock on 2022, and look forward to 2023, let’s briefly reflect on some of the topics that are current with our Living sector teams and clients ...
Various measures adopted by the MEF, the OSCE and PERÚCOMPRAS within the framework of the declaration of the State of Emergency established by Supreme Decree No. 044-2020-PCM. On March 17, 2020, the General Supply Directorate of the Ministry of Economy and Finance published Directorial Resolution No. 001-2020-EF-54 ...
Republic Act No. 9003, also known as the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, is a landmark environmental legislation designed to meet the country’s waste management problems. It requires local government units to achieve 25% waste reduction through re-using, recycling, and composting activities and other resource recovery activities. However, two decades after its enactment, solid waste management remains to be a major challenge ...
The Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) is a regulatory body established by the government of Dubai to oversee and regulate the virtual assets industry. In line with its mandate, VARA has issued a number of rule books, in particular the Compliance and Risk Management Rulebook (CRM), which sets out the regulatory framework for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) operating in Dubai ...
The issue of the Dubai Law No. 4 of 2022 regulating Virtual Assets in Dubai (VA Law) issued in March 2022 created a lot of buzz and further strengthened Dubai’s position as a global hub for digital assets. The VA Law also established the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) which was tasked with creating a legal framework for virtual assets sector ...
Although the start of 2020 also shook up the M&A world, the market recovered especially in the second half of the year. At Van Doorne, the M&A specialists experienced this in the number of transactions: 32 of them. This puts the firm in 8th place in the Mergermarket Benelux League Table, based on the number of deals. In 2020, in Europe almost $850 billion was spent on a total of 6,658 transactions. This is an increase of 5.6% compared to 2019 ...
New regulations are in force that require occupational pension schemes providing defined contribution (DC) benefits to demonstrate value for members or face consolidation. The New Regulations The Occupational Pension Schemes (Administration, Investment, Charges and Governance) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 (the new regulations) came into force on 1 October 2021 ...
December 1, 2023 By: Leah Lively California Business and Professional Code sections 16600 to 16607 already invalidate agreements restricting California employees from pursuing any lawful profession, trade, or business, with limited exceptions mainly in the sale of businesses. Starting January 1, 2024, things are going to get more difficult (and potentially costly) for employers ...
From television commercials to naming rights for arenas, the topic of cryptocurrency has been hard to avoid. While cryptocurrency may be virtual, its creation or ’mining’ occurs in the real world. This mining poses a credit risk for utility companies, given the incredible amount of electricity required to operate a “mining” facility. For example, crypto mining company Core Scientific, Inc ...
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced a period for public comment on whether Section 301 product exclusions should be reinstated for certain Chinese-origin goods. The product exclusions eligible for potential reinstatement are the relatively small subset of exclusions for which the USTR had both previously granted an exclusion and an extension of the exclusion ...
The U.S.-China trade dispute continues to simmer with multiple significant developments in the past several weeks: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced the exclusion process for Chinese imports subject to List 4A Section 301 tariffs will open on Oct. 31, 2019 and conclude on Jan. 31, 2020. List 4A and 4B tariffs on an estimated $300 billion of goods imported from China, effective Sept. 1, 2019 and Dec ...
In a class action lawsuit filed Monday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Binance.US (Binance), a major cryptocurrency exchange, has been accused of misleading investors surrounding the Terra blockchain ecosystem. This is the first major court filing in the United States relating to Terra, whose UST and LUNC tokens crashed in May, wiping out around $40 billion in investor funds ...
