To boost the economy post-Brexit the government is committed to establishing up to 10 freeports across the UK. In our latest freeport bitesize article, we look at some of the planning implications of which bidders and bid participants should be aware. Back in August 2019 the UK Government announced plans to create ten new freeports that would be free of “unnecessary checks and paperwork, and include customs and tax benefits” ...
On January 1, 2020, Congress overrode President Trump’s veto to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 6395 – 116th Congress (2019-20)), which includes the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (the “AML Act”). The AML Act revises the Bank Secrecy Act to bolster the government’s power to identify and regulate suspicious banking activity ...
CONGRESS PASSES TRADEMARK MODERNIZATION ACT LEGISLATION In December 2020, the U.S. Congress took action that will have a significant effect on brand holders. At the end of the year, Congress passed the Trademark Modernization Act (“TMA”) that, inter alia, provides additional tools to the USPTO to respond to the rise in improper behavior in trademark filings including filing fraudulent claims of use ...
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued to Congress its annual bid protest report. As discussed below, this year's report is noteworthy for multiple reasons, including that it shows that protesters received some form of relief from the procuring agency in more than half of the protests filed with the GAO in FY 2020, and the GAO's use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) increased by 210% in FY 2020 ...
The Biden administration implemented a regulatory rule freeze affecting all federal agency rules that had not gone into effect as of Jan. 20, 2021. At its core, the regulatory rule freeze requires all pending final rules to be delayed at least 60 days in order for the Biden administration to review and opine on the necessity and scope of affected rules. During this delay period, the administration may review, revise, and possibly rescind federal administrative rules ...
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has just released its annual statistical overview[1] of False Claims Act (FCA) and other fraud actions for Fiscal Year 2020 (FY2020)[2], and the numbers tell a mixed story. The total of just over $2.2 billion in settlements and judgments represents a decline of more than one-quarter in recoveries from FY2019,[3] likely reflecting workforce, logistical, and judicial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic ...
Article PDFJust when businesses thought they had figured out their Proposition 65 compliance strategies, the State of California, through the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), has proposed a substantial change that will drastically limit the use of the short-form safe harbor warning first authorized in 2018 ...
The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement has effectively brought an end to state aid and a new regime of subsidy control has come into effect ...
The majority of people with a mobile phone or access to the internet have received unsolicited emails or calls from telemarketers (cold marketing). While the practice of cold marketing is decades-old, the recent awareness in data protection and privacy has affected this concept in recent times, particularly in relation to access to the data of consumers ...
This is the first in our series of articles in which we will look at how Brexit and the EU-UK trade deal impacts research and development. In July 2020, the Government published its Research and Development Roadmap, which sets out the UK’s ambitious long-term objectives for investment in science and research to deliver economic growth and societal benefits across the UK ...
Effective Jan. 26, 2021, all air passengers traveling to the United States will be required to get a viral test for current infection within the three days before their flight to the U.S. is scheduled to depart, and provide written documentation of their laboratory test results (paper or electronic copy) to the airline ...
In the state of Ohio, a light-duty job offer is a strategic way to either bring an injured worker back to the workforce or bar temporary total compensation, should the injured worker reject a valid offer. Either way, it can aid employers in eliminating, minimizing, and/or stopping temporary total disability compensation from being paid in a claim ...
On 12 January 2021, David Mathias, Tim Willis, Sam Grange and Matthew Stimson from our Planning & Environmental team hosted a webinar to discuss the main changes introduced to the existing ‘Standard Method’ used for assessing housing need in England and Wales ...
The United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued an order that will take effect on January 26, 2021, requiring all arriving international airline passengers to provide proof of a negative COVID test taken within three days of the flight’s foreign departure. For those who have had it, the CDC will require proof of recovery ...
The year 2020 was turbulent in many ways: the worldwide pandemic slowed down a number of reforms and caused challenges for various industries. Now it is time to look back and remind ourselves of the changes that took place in the field of employment law over the past year. It is also time to glance at the reforms awaiting us in 2021, a year hopefully brighter than its predecessor ...
If parents cannot agree whether their children should be vaccinated, they can make an application under Section 8 of the Children Act 1989 to ask a judge to determine the issue. In M v H (Private Law Vaccination) [2020], the mother objected to the parties' two children aged six-years-old and four-years-old being given routine childhood vaccines in accordance with the NHS vaccination schedule ...
On Dec. 22, the Ohio Senate passed the Employment Law Uniformity Act – HB 352. Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill into law on Jan. 12, 2021. The bill is the culmination of 20 years of work by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce to address expansion of Ohio’s anti-discrimination statute resulting from Ohio Supreme Court decisions that interpreted Ohio Revised Code Section 4112 expansively ...
On Nov. 20, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued two final rules, which implement changes to the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) and Physician Self-Referral Law (Stark Law) regulations (respectively the OIG Final Rule and the CMS Final Rule, collectively the Final Rules) ...
2020 was a year of unprecedented circumstances and change, and more change is coming in 2021—this time, in the form of significant modifications to the nationwide permitting program. On September 15, 2020, the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) published a notice of proposed rulemaking to reissue and modify nationwide permits (NWPs), ahead of the usual five-year reauthorization schedule for the current 2017 NWPs ...
The Court of Protection is a specialist Court, focussing solely on supporting vulnerable individuals. This past year has acutely highlighted the needs of those most vulnerable in our society and their dependency on others to help manage their affairs. The Court has had to adjust its practices in order to ensure that help and solutions are found for those lacking capacity with minimal delay ...
Are you concerned about the impact of Brexit on your IP lifecycle? We’ve prepared the following guidance as the introduction to our new Brexit and IP five-part info series where we detail the impacts of Brexit on the various stages of the IP lifecycle. 1 ...
Canadian newspapers' loss of advertising revenues to the hands of internet giants over the past several years has jeopardized the very existence of many such newspapers. In 2018, our governments announced several advantageous tax measures in order to ensure the survival of independent print media ...
On January 6, 2021, Treasury issued two new Interim Final Rules (IFRs) addressing the new Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Nonprofits, and Venues Act’s (Act) creation of PPP Second Draw Loans, and the Act’s various changes to PPP requirements generally. The major PPP components of the Act are set forth in detail in Buchalter’s COVID Alert of December 28, 2020 (Buchalter PPP Changes Alert), which can be found here ...
