A rose, said Shakespeare, by any other name would smell as sweet. But while the Bard may know his flowers, he clearly was no expert on branding Apples. Rodrigo Duterte, the Filipino president, would like to change his country’s moniker “because the Philippines is named after King Phillip”. He appears to be eager to distance his nation from its colonial past, the said monarch being a 16th century ruler of Spain ...
As of August 7th, 2018, the amendments of the Consumer Protection Law (CPL), which includes for the first time, the consumer protection in the field of electronic commerce (e-commerce), taking that as the contracting process or the goods, services and commercial information trading through data communication webs ...
In 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued regulations that prohibited long-term care facilities from entering into pre-dispute arbitration agreements with residents and their families. Shortly thereafter, those regulations were successfully challenged in federal court, and CMS has not attempted to enforce them. On July 18, 2019, CMS issued a final rule that will formally rescind the ban on pre-dispute arbitration agreements with long-term care residents ...
Strict data protection requirements apply to the use of location tracking systems both in the employment context and in cooperation with other companies. In its partial judgement from March 19, 2019, the Lüneburg Administrative Court ruled in compliance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation and the new Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) that unrestricted tracking of employee vehicles is impermissible ...
A website operator that embeds third party plugins on its website may become a joint controller in relation to the website visitors' personal data together with the third party service provider, according to a preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in case C-40/17 Fashion ID. The judgment upholds the broad interpretation of joint controllership of personal data established by the CJEU in its recent case law ...
In what appears to be a first under the False Claims Act, a case based on flawed cybersecurity has been settled, for nearly $9 million. On July 31, 2019, the Attorney General of New York announced that, alongside the U.S. Department of Justice, New York, eighteen other states, and the District of Columbia have reached an $8.6 million settlement with Cisco Systems, Inc. (“Cisco”) over sales of surveillance video software allegedly vulnerable to hacking ...
This summer, the IRS significantly increased its efforts to police the taxation of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other similar cryptocurrencies. On July 26, 2019, the IRS announced that it had begun sending letters to taxpayers who potentially failed to pay cryptocurrency taxes associated with digital currency transactions or failed to properly report those transactions. By the end of August, the IRS anticipates that it will have sent over 10,000 letters to taxpayers ...
The Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") published its long-awaited decision on the use of the Facebook Like-Button on July 29, 2019 (Case C-40/17). One major aspect of the judgment is the question to what extent Facebook and website operators who incorporate the Like-Button into their website are joint controllers under European data protection law. As a result, the CJEU affirms this question and takes a firm stand on the conditions for joint controllership ...
Overview Following the enactment of Law No. 33 of 2014 on Guarantees for Halal Products (“Law 33/2014”), its implementing regulation, Government Regulation No. 31 of 2019 (“GR 31/2019”), was recently issued and came into effect on 3 May 2019. In principle, Law 33/2014 requires that all products imported, distributed or traded in Indonesia be certified halal in accordance with Islamic principles ...
Under final rules issued last month, employers can offer two new types of health reimbursement arrangements or HRAs: individual coverage HRAs ("ICHRAs") and excepted benefit HRAs ("EBHRAs"). HRAs are self-funded, account based plans that reimburse employees for qualified medical expenses on a tax-free basis. The final rules apply for plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2020. While the rules are complex, the new ICHRAs and EBHRAs offer new planning opportunities for employers ...
Legislation Aligns State and Federal Laws On July 17, 2019, Ohio lawmakers passed Senate Bill (S.B.) No. 57, which decriminalizes hemp and creates licensure programs for those wanting to cultivate or process hemp and hemp byproducts. Ohio was one of the few states that did not update its statutes to align with federal regulations following the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which removed hemp as a controlled substance at the federal level ...
The DIFC Authority has proposed the enactment of legislation (the Proposed Law) to replace its current Data Protection Law, DIFC Law 1 of 2007 (as amended) (the Current Law). The Proposed Law is the subject of Consultation Paper 6 of 2019, which is presently posted on the DIFC website for public comments to be provided by 18 August 2019 ...
There has been intense work on the IT security law 2.0 since the “German doxing case" of late 2018/early 2019 when large volumes of data of German celebrities and politicians were published. This bill will significantly extend the importance and the competences of the Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (“BSI”) in information technology ...
On July 23, 2019, the Ohio Department of Commerce will conduct a public hearing regarding proposed amendments to several Medical Marijuana Control Program rules. The Medical Marijuana Control Program allows individuals with specified medical conditions, upon the recommendation of an Ohio-licensed physician, to purchase and use medical marijuana. The rules govern the activities of medical marijuana cultivators, processors, and testing laboratories ...
Below you will find a brief summary of the resolutions of the data protection authority uploaded on their website up until today imposing a fine under the GDPR. 1. Failure to facilitate the exercise of data subjects' rights The data subject wanted to exercise his access right, right to receive a copy, and his right to restrict processing of camera recordings of him at the reception area of a service provider ...
Along with the prediction that the continued growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) will transform our everyday lives and how we do business, we can also anticipate that the increased number of connected devices will bring about additional challenges, including greater security and privacy-related risks ...
After nine years of deliberation, the Pennsylvania Board of Pharmacy (Board) issued final regulations (effective June 22, 2019) setting new standards for pharmacist compounding of drug products. While the final regulations are substantially less onerous than as originally proposed, the regulations represent the Board’s commitment to ensuring compounding is performed in a safe and reliable manner in Pennsylvania ...
Beginning July 1, 2019, the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) is requiring all Ohio managed care plans to make room and board payments directly to hospice providers when hospice services are provided to individuals residing at skilled nursing facilities (SNF) ...
On June 13, 2019, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) announced it had completed its upgrade of its Mine Data Retrieval System (MDRS). Under the new system, mine operators will have new tools to help review compliance with MSHA regulations as well as assessing employment and production records. The upgraded system will also enable mine operators to track accidents, inspections, violation history, and health sampling data ...
The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation will no longer offer coverage for OxyContin by the end of 2019. The agency announced this change, given the drug’s potential for abuse, misuse, addiction, and dependence. The BWC will no longer pay for OxyContin or generic forms of the medication for workers who suffer an industrial injury on or after June 1, 2019. Injured workers who are currently on OxyContin will have until Dec ...
In a short, unpublished opinion, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an ERISA pension plan administrator should have treated a deceased participant's registered domestic partner as a surviving spouse and granted his claim for survivor benefits ...
Last month, a California appellate court rejected an insurer's arguments and affirmed a large punitive damages award against the insurer, providing a fresh roadmap for policyholders to obtain such relief when insurers engage in certain bad-faith practices. Mazik v. GEICO General Insurance Company (2019) 35 Cal.App.5th 455 involved a policyholder's claim for the $50,000 limits under his underinsured motorist policy ...
The topic of “joint controllers” according to Art. 26 GDPR continues to gain momentum. The State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in Baden-Württemberg (LfDI) has now, for the first time, published a sample of an agreement for joint controllers under Art. 26(1) s. 2 GDPR as well as a sample relating to the fulfillment of obligations to inform the data subjects pursuant to Art. 26(2) s. 2 GDPR ...
There are hardly any companies that do not use video surveillance systems (CCTV). Such systems record areas such as plant and work facilities or entrance areas. Oftentimes, the video images are not only displayed live on a monitor (“camera-to-monitor system”), but are also recorded automatically for a certain period of time ...
On April 2, 2019, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its proposed “Modernizing Ignitable Liquids Determinations” rule in the Federal Register.[1] Ostensibly, the rule is, as described in its title, an effort to “modernize” – i.e., update – certain aspects of the regulations relating to determining whether a waste is a hazardous waste based on the characteristic of ignitability, which are found in 40 C.F.R. 261 ...
