Today’s supply chains are frequently paper-based operations subject to human error and delay.  Therefore, some companies are beginning to invest in digital infrastructure, including blockchain tools, to strengthen supply chain efficiency and visibility.  One benefit of using blockchain for supply chain management is that parties can cooperatively use smart contracts to make, track, and manage payments made in cryptocurrency (also referred to colloquially as “crypto”).  For example, a smart contract may register and record acceptance of a shipment, triggering a notice message tha ..read more

Does your company have an incident response plan in case your personnel related digital and cloud based platforms are shut down?  Federal and state laws require companies to maintain compliance with personnel related regulations, regardless of such failures.  A recent incident highlights the need for your company to be prepared now. On Saturday, December 11, 2021, the Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG or Kronos) sent a notice to its customers— that it was “made aware of issues impacting the availability of UKG solutions using the Kronos Private Cloud (KPC).” These impacted systems—including ..read more

For many emerging tech companies, pursuing patent protection often interferes with the company’s short-term objectives of increasing revenues, increasing customer adoption, and raising financing rounds. As a result, many companies choose to forego filing for patents when they first launch their product or service, thinking that if the company’s technology gets traction in the market, they can always seek patents later.  However, many foreign countries limit or prohibit filing for patent protection covering technology that has already been included in a product that has been launched or di ..read more

Intellectual property protection is a critical pillar for establishing and maintaining competitive advantages. At the same time, it is important to strategically allocate resources to building a patent portfolio. This can be especially true for emerging companies, where spending on IP involves real tradeoffs with other business goals, and basic rules of thumb that larger companies can rely on to rest assured that they are making good decisions on IP spend, such as 1 patent per $1 million in R&D spending, are not useful. From a cost-benefit perspective, protecting a single invention worldwi ..read more

Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Those in the Intellectual Property (IP) world can appreciate what that means. Ask any emerging tech company that has been slapped – or punched – with a patent infringement lawsuit by a competitor. Patent litigation is very disruptive because it require significant amounts of resources to defend against, and can impact marketing and business development efforts.  All of these disruptions affect a company’s ability to raise money. Additionally, it is not uncommon for companies to get hit with patent litigati ..read more

Defense contractors and their subcontractors and supply chains that have been preparing for the challenge of complying with the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) recently received some welcome news from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD): DoD is revamping the strategic direction of CMMC via a new “CMMC 2.0” framework that provides additional flexibility to the defense supply chain in how it addresses the cybersecurity requirements for defense contracts. That additional flexibility includes the ability to self-certify compliance in some circumstances, as opposed to obtain ..read more

What do teen digital artists, Tom Brady, Doja Cat, and Foley & Lardner LLP all have in common?  They are all trending in popularity for their use of NFTs. Jaiden Stipp is a digital artist, who at only 15 years old sells pieces of his digital artwork as NFTs.1 “Forever Colored,” one of Stipp’s top-selling NFTs located here, sold for 20 ETH (ETH is the acronym for Ether, a form of cryptocurrency on the Ethereum blockchain).  At the time, the 20 ETH from the sale of Stipp’s “Forever Colored” traded for $30,000 USD, and a month after the sale, traded for closer to $60,000 USD. Tom Br ..read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently published changes to data security requirements for financial institutions by revising the Safeguards Rule (Rule) under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). The law is designed to protect the privacy and security of consumer financial information when dealing with financial institutions. The scope of covered financial institutions is broad and includes a wide spectrum of companies in the financial industry, not just banks. In adopting the new security rules, the FTC recognized that “[i]n recent years, widespread data breaches and cyberattacks have resu ..read more

On October 6, 2021, Apple announced that the requirement that applications that allow users to create an account must also enable users to initiate deletion of their accounts from within the application will go into effect on January 31, 2021. Apple originally posted these requirements in Section 5.1.1 of the App Store Review Guidelines, and comes as there is increased scrutiny on the privacy practices of many big technology companies by federal and other lawmakers and state governments in the US continue to pass new privacy laws (many of which include a right to delete one’s pe ..read more

The counterfeit business is booming.  In fact, counterfeit goods account for a whopping 3.3% of global trade1 and cost the U.S. economy approximately $600 billion a year.2 The Dangers of Counterfeit Products Counterfeiting has an extensive negative impact, leading to product recalls, lawsuits, consumer injuries, loss of sales, loss of consumer trust and, eventually, long-term reputational harm. Some of the most dangerous counterfeit products on the market today include counterfeit airbags that malfunction during car crashes, counterfeit lithium-ion batteries that self-ignite or expl ..read more