On July 17, 2018, the European Commission successfully concluded negotiations with Japan on a reciprocal adequacy finding which will allow personal data to flow freely from the EU to Japan (and vice versa).
The adequacy decision has not yet been formally adopted, as it must still undergo the respective EU and Japanese approval procedures, which
As the Foreign Agents Registration Act continues to receive national attention, an article in this quarter’s PLI Current journal describes the Justice Department’s increased focus on the statute. The article, authored by Covington’s Rob Kelner, Zack Parks, and Alex Langton, discusses the shifting FARA enforcement landscape, analyzes how the statute works, and addresses pending FARA
The UK Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has announced its intention to carry out a market review into the supply to merchants of card-acquiring services by financial services providers. In this Covington Alert, my colleagues Louise Freeman, Charlotte Hill and Elaine Whiteford look at the powers the PSR holds, why the review has been initiated and
Last year, we wrote about a trial court’s decision to dismiss a False Claims Act (“FCA”) complaint regarding alleged Trade Agreements Act (“TAA”) non-compliances because the relator failed to plead fraud with “particularity” under Rule 9(b). That decision offered a sweeping rebuke of speculative FCA claims, and emphasized why it can be difficult to present
Companies doing business with state and local governments or operating in regulated industries are subject to a dizzying array of “pay-to-play” rules. These rules effectively prohibit company executives and employees (and in some cases, their family members) from making certain personal political contributions. Even inadvertent violations can be dangerous: a single political contribution can, for example,
On July 25, the GSA’s Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) published a report summarizing its audit of the GSA Transactional Data Reporting (“TDR”) pilot program. That ongoing pilot program, which we have covered previously and have been tracking since the beginning, allows participating Federal Supply Schedule (“FSS”) contract-holders to report government-sales data each month,
More than 20 years after the adoption of the first European Commission Leniency Notice, the detection and sanctioning of cartels remains a key feature of the enforcement agenda of the European Commission and – the currently still 28 – European Union national competition authorities. Leniency programmes are a crucial tool in uncovering cartels, with a large
City leaders across the globe are predicted to spend upwards of $41 trillion by 2020 to deploy smart city technologies within their locales. From Toronto to Tokyo, cities are vying to harness the benefits of the Internet of Things (“IOT”) in order to help make their streets safer, transportation more efficient, and their environments greener.
By Kristof Van Quathem and Anna Sophia Oberschelp de Meneses
Exactly one month after the GDPR started applying, the French Supervisory Authority (“CNIL”) issued a formal warning to two companies in relation to their processing of localization data for targeted advertising (see here). The CNIL found that the consent on which both companies relied