February 2013

News outlets are reporting that the White House will appoint FTC Commissioner Edith Ramirez to lead the Commission.  She would replace current FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who announced his resignation in January.  Ramirez’s appointment to chair the Commission would leave it evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with one empty seat until another person is nominated…

The Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in Luxembourg heard argument yesterday concerning the “right to be forgotten”—specifically, whether search engines such as Google must block search results when asked by European citizens to remove references to themselves.  This particular case—which is representative of approximately 200 similar cases in Spain—came before the CJEU…

Yesterday’s guilty pleas in the Danielczyk criminal trial leaves open an important question that campaign finance practitioners must consider closely going forward: when does the government consider a sua sponte submission itself to constitute a criminal violation, and seek to compel counsel to become a witness against their client?  As BNA first reported, the Justice…

Yesterday the FTC released its annual report of consumer complaints, highlighting identity theft as the leading category of complaints, with 18% of the total.  The 2012 report analyzes complaints received by the FTC, certain other federal agencies, state law enforcement agencies, and non-governmental organizations such as the Better Business Bureau.  After identity theft, consumers filed the…

This post originally appeared on our sister blog, InsideMedicalDevices.

Unlike in the US, medical devices in the EU are not subject to a premarket authorization by a competent authority but instead to a conformity assessment procedure.  For low-risk devices, the manufacturer conducts this conformity assessment procedure, whereas for medium and high risk devices, independent…

The Affordable Care Act requires an employee to have a minimum amount of health coverage starting in 2014, and requires an employer to offer affordable health coverage to its employees.  But how do these health mandates apply to the employee’s spouse and dependents?  Recent IRS regulations fill in several pieces of this puzzle.

Several provisions…