In two years the Internet Law Center will celebrate its 20th year. This year, however, the firm is celebrating a somewhat bittersweet milestone — our first retirement. After fifteen years of helping this firm as a legal assistant with a specialty in trademark filings, Raun MacKinnon Burnham has taken her final bow. According to SevenReflections.com,…

I was excited to return to the California Lawyers Association’s IP Section’s IP and Emerging Technologies Conference (formerly IP and the Internet Conference). I have spoken at this conference many times and, when I was on the IP Section Executive Committee, I ran the 2016 conference in San Francisco. This year I spoke on the…

I represent Claire Contreras (aka Maharlika) who is a Filipino-American video blogger in Southern California and outspoken critic of the current administration of Philippines President Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos, Jr. She has been sued for defamation by a Filipino designer with close ties to the Marcos family and today we filed a motion under California’s…

Epilogue: Trollbusters Scores Anthem Awards for Third Year in a Row

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that text message scams cost $330 million in losses in 2022. Being alert to scams and educating employees about them can protect your company, your employees, and your data from catastrophic consequences. In 2022, the FTC indicated that these were the top text message scams: #1: #1: Copycat Bank…

The report explains: Generative AI models have received significant attention and scrutiny due to their potential harms, such as risks involving privacy, misinformation, copyright, and non-consensual sexual imagery. This report focuses on privacy issues and relevant policy considerations for Congress. Some policymakers and stakeholders have raised privacy concerns about how individual data may be used…

Under the European Data Directive and its successor, the General Data Protection Regulation, data of a European subject may be transferred out of the EU only via an approved international framework or through approved Standard Contract Clauses (SCC) contained in Data Protection Agreements or binding corporate rules approved by the relevant data protection authority. Beginning…

There are now a dozen states that have enacted comprehensive privacy legislation similar in many respects to California’s landmark comprehensive privacy law, with Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, and Utah each enacting laws this year. A list of the laws, their effective date (laws in effect are in bold), and applicable cure period…

In January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed a new rule that would ban employers from imposing noncompete clauses on their workers (employees, contractors, interns etc.) and require employers to rescind existing noncompete clauses and inform workers that they are no longer in effect. The FTC described the practice as an “often exploitative practice that…