To celebrate Data Privacy Day, the data security & privacy team at Burns & Levinson is sharing some exciting highlights for 2023...more
Nearly two years since many professionals gathered in-person and on-site, the prospect of return-to-office en mass is picking up pace....more
2/16/2022
/ Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employer Responsibilities ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
Personal Protective Equipment ,
Re-Opening Guidelines ,
Return-to-Work Agreements ,
Screening Procedures ,
Vaccinations ,
Virus Testing ,
Workplace Decontamination ,
Workplace Safety
In a recent decision, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB or Board) considered whether an application based upon an “intent to use” a mark in commerce may be predicated on proposed use with currently unlawful goods...more
The European Commission published its implementing decision for the new Standard Contractual Clauses (“SCC”) in June of 2021. On September 27, 2021, the old SCCs that had been adopted prior to the General Data Protection...more
Pesky telemarketing calls that plagued consumers in the 1990s were severely reined in through a combination of technology, such as caller ID, and legislation, such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (“TCPA”)....more
Earlier this June, China passed the Data Security Law (“DSL”), which will go into effect on September 1, 2021. Unlike many international data security laws, the DSL is not restricted to personal information and instead...more
7/22/2021
/ China ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Data Management ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Data Security ,
Hackers ,
International Data Transfers ,
Personal Data ,
Popular
Following the lead of California and then Virginia, Colorado recently became the third U.S. state to pass a comprehensive law providing its residents with personal data privacy rights. While there is significant overlap...more
7/7/2021
/ California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) ,
Consumer Privacy Rights ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Collection ,
Data Management ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Information Governance ,
Personal Data ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Privacy Laws ,
State and Local Government
A year ago, the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the U.S. Privacy Shield framework as an adequate safeguard under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which had previously been a popular safeguard...more
Does the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and its harsh penalties apply to employees who exceed their authorized access to computer systems for personal reasons? The Supreme Court has now said no....more
Does a trademark applicant’s belief that the cannabis goods specified in its trademark application will become federally lawful in the future provide a sufficient basis upon which to predicate its claimed “intent to use” the...more
Breaking news out of Florida: On April 21, 2021, the Florida House, in a near unanimous vote, passed the Florida Privacy Protection Act (FPPA). Largely modeled after the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the FPPA would...more
5/12/2021
/ California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) ,
Consumer Privacy Rights ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Collection ,
Data Management ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Florida ,
Information Governance ,
Personal Data ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Privacy Laws ,
State and Local Government
Copyright is a form of intellectual property rights providing owners of creative content with the exclusive right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, publicly perform, publicly display, and publicly...more
Unlike most of the world, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) requires trademark owners to demonstrate actual evidence of use of their marks in order to register and/or maintain their trademark rights. For...more
“Available” is not the same as “lawful to own” when registering a domain name. Domain registrars – such as GoDaddy, Bluehost and Domain.com – are just marketplaces for available domain names. A registrar’s willingness to...more
If your website collects information about its visitors, whether by name or anonymously, you are almost certainly required to make specific public disclosures about your treatment of this data and offer visitors information...more
Companies often leave decisions on the new company name or the name of a new product for “another day,” believing that finding the right word is just a matter of internal consensus building or exercising a relatively minor...more
Nearly half of all websites use cookies—small text files stored on internet users’ computers and mobile devices so web servers can track that user. Cookies come in a variety of flavors in terms of their purpose, the party...more
Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) is much more than a reminder to update your organization’s website privacy notice. While an updated privacy notice is one of the more public-facing steps an organization...more
With the President’s signing of the Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021 on December 27, 2020, several important updates to U.S. intellectual property law have been adopted....more
Before adopting a new trademark or filing an application for federal trademark registration, it is wise to conduct clearance searching. There are various purposes behind clearance. These include 1) dispute avoidance; 2)...more
A trademark’s value can be lost or weakened or a trademark owner fails to protect or police rights in the marketplace. Even improper and/or inconsistent use of a mark can hamper a trademark owner’s ability to enforce...more
Trademark rights are jurisdictional, meaning a trademark registration issued in the U.S. may be all but worthless in trying to stop infringement in say, Australia. If you do business outside of the U.S., pursuing trademark...more
The process to apply for a federal trademark registration is a separate, and more involved examination process, than registering a business name with a state’s Secretary of State. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office...more
A relative outlier compared to the trademark regimes in most of the world, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) only permits registrations to be maintained for goods and services that are actually being...more
Highlights of Brazil’s LGPD -
Brazil became the latest country to draw inspiration from Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and adopt its own national comprehensive legal framework for personal data...more