London partner Pulina Whitaker recently published a LawFlash discussing how the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union will make the UK a “third country”—meaning that unrestricted cross-border transfers of data will no longer automatically be able to take place between the UK and the EU—and considers whether the UK will be “adequate” after Brexit.
TECHNOLOGY, OUTSOURCING, AND COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS
NEWS FOR LAWYERS AND SOURCING PROFESSIONALS
NEWS FOR LAWYERS AND SOURCING PROFESSIONALS
The first edition of Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation 2019, published by Global Legal Insights, provides in-depth analysis of the developing arena of the regulation of blockchain and cryptocurrency, and country-by-country analysis of issues including government attitudes and definition, cryptocurrency regulation, sales regulation, taxation, money transmission laws and anti-money laundering requirements, promotion and testing, ownership and licensing requirements, mining, and border restrictions.
Continuing the firm’s thought leadership in this emerging field, Morgan Lewis lawyers Vasilisa Strizh, Anastasia Kiseleva, and Dmitry Dmitriev have written the chapter providing insight on the approach in Russia.
Please join Morgan Lewis partner Edward Hansen and the Sourcing Industry Group (SIG) for a keynote panel discussion at the Fall 2018 SIG Global Summit on the strengths and pitfalls of highly collaborative relationships.
Topics include:
- Various collaboration efforts buyers and suppliers are using to create a more collaborative environment
- Collaboration efforts that might be seen as "crossing the line"
- Laws, regulations, and resources you can turn to for guidance
Additional Panel Speakers: Lawrence Kane (Senior Leader, Strategic Sourcing Functional Excellence/2CES Integration, The Boeing Company) and Kate Vitasek (Faculty, Graduate & Executive, University of Tennessee).
The event will take place on October 18 from 8:00–9:00 am PT. Information on the SIG Global Summit is available on the Sourcing Industry Group website. To register, please visit the summit information website.
There is an adage that basically says that businesses don’t do business—people do business. That might seem obvious, but it’s useful when one stops and thinks about the interplay between a contract, how that contract is negotiated, and whether the relationship between the people who will be doing business can survive the negotiations.
This plays into the deal work that many of us do because many of those deals are complex—and the parties will ultimately rely on each other to drive success. For example, to implement transformational software, like an ERP system, the systems integrator must bring a unique set of skills to the table. The contract can drive the vendor to bring those skills and they must be proficient, but for the project to be successful, the customer must also bring certain skills: knowledge of its business processes, the ability to assess and implement change, and more. In other words, for the project to work, the parties have to act as partners.
Nearly every form of service agreement contains a provision restricting the ability of one or both parties to subcontract their obligations. A typical provision (with a standard quick and dirty markup) might look like this:
“Vendor shall not subcontract any of its obligations under this Agreement without the express prior written consent of Customer, which such consent shall not be unreasonably withheld. The subcontractors set forth on Schedule X are hereby approved by Customer.”
These limitations are often included as a standard part of the legal boilerplate without much thought, but can present significant problems, especially given the broad use and incorporation of third-party technologies and services.
It seems that there are many forces at play that are almost designed to create or exacerbate change anxiety. Professionals in industries whose business models depend on stoking our change anxiety bombard us with article after article on social media. Industry conferences that consistently display whichever adoption curve you’re supposed to be on at the moment—hinting that you’re seriously behind where you should be, with the looming possibility that you’re about to go out of business because of it. Yesterday it was the cloud, today it’s RPA and AI (or IA depending upon whom you ask), and tomorrow it will be something else.
But even with all of this change coming at us, perhaps most troubling is that feeling that if you just stop for a minute to think and reflect, you may be labeled as entrenched, unwilling to adapt, a dinosaur, or something worse.
The transformational programs that we work on tend to reveal many of the stresses that permeate our clients’ professional lives. In deal work, one of the first places you see this is when a request for proposal (RFP) is being drafted that is supposed to reflect a progressive vision.
President Donald Trump signed the NIST Small Business Cybersecurity Act, S. 770 (formally known as the “Min Street Cybersecurity Act”) into law on August 14.
The new act amends the National Institute of Standards and Technology Act requiring it within the next year, in consultation with the heads of other appropriate federal agencies, to “disseminate clear and concise resources to help small business concerns identify, assess, manage, and reduce their cybersecurity risks” and to require the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to consider small businesses when it “facilitates and supports the development of voluntary, consensus-based, industry-led guidelines and procedures to cost-effectively reduce cyber risks to critical infrastructure.”
As detailed in a prior blog post, California’s new privacy law, commonly referred to as the CCPA, seeks to impose tougher privacy requirements on companies that collect and use consumer data. Although the law does not go into effect until 2020, California’s attorney general has already called into question his office’s ability to comply with the operational obligations of the CCPA and raised questions about its potential modification of California’s Unfair Competition Law, and businesses are working to find ways to narrow their impending disclosure obligations prior to the law’s enactment. Concerns about the breadth of the law and the ability to enforce it will continue to be weighed against the current push to expand consumer privacy protection.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hosted the first National Security Summit on July 31 in New York City. In attendance were US Vice President Mike Pence, senior members of the DHS and other federal agencies, as well as industry leaders from sectors including telecom, finance, and energy. One of the major announcements to come out of this summit was the formation of the National Risk Management Center, including a new supply chain risk management task force.
Website terms of use are often copied and pasted from other sites, and viewed as “standard” or “boilerplate” terms to protect site operators and set forth the basic rules governing the relationship between the site operator and the user. It’s important for a site operator to make sure these terms give it the protections it needs, are enforceable, and comply with laws, so from time to time the terms should be reviewed and updated to align with the business practices of the site operator and applicable law.
