Regulation

In today's age of endless content recycling, the provenance of any particular published work can be disguised or ignored as it is churned through multiple media ' including on the Internet in social media. Consequently, it can be difficult for authors and creators to identify and assert their rights in their published works in every circumstance where they might have been licensed or are being used. But for licensors to overlook these rights brings peril.

In recent years, the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) has brought far fewer revenue recognition and other financial reporting cases than it had historically. That leads us naturally to wonder whether this trend will continue in the future. Not likely.

The marriage of digital media and entertainment content has grown to include a range of possibilities and issues that entertainment law practitioners may encounter. The boom in social gaming is one of these.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon struck down Federal Reserve regulations on debit-card transaction fees on July 31, a victory for retailers that process high numbers of low-ticket transactions. Leon found that the Fed adopted rules that "inappropriately" inflated fees by billions of dollars.

President Barack Obama's administration has drafted a potential recipe for sweetening its voluntary corporate cybersecurity program. The program is under development at the White House and is aimed at utility companies and other businesses that are key to U.S. infrastructure.

This article discusses several contemporary privacy issues, including: whether accidental access to another's e-mail account constitutes unauthorized computer access; whether the use of a fictitious online identity can lead to civil liability; and whether the account holder of an unsecured home Wi-Fi network can be found liable for infringing activities by third parties using the network.

In order to deal with an expanding Internet, brand owners need to understand how to use a variety of tools to handle the different brand protection and legal challenges that will be presented. For brand owners looking at the New gTLD space, formulating a trademark protection strategy should be viewed as an important tool on an entire tool belt of protection strategies that together can be used as a comprehensive plan.

Every franchise system chief executive encounters situations in which a franchisee has a good reason for not complying with a rule, or in which the infraction is fairly minor. But how can a franchisor be sure about where to draw the line and how strictly to enforce the rules that are set out in the franchise agreement or operations manual?