Tomorrow is May 25 and therefore the entry-into-force of the GDPR.  The European Commission views the GDPR as one of its significant Digital Single Market (DSM) achievements.  The Commission estimates that the DSM could add Euros 415 billion a year to EU GDP and add hundreds of thousands of jobs (see also this document on the economic impact of the DSM).  There is no Commission calculation on what contribution the GDPR would make to this overall DSM estimate (it does say that GDPR will save business some money – see below), but the Commission argues that the GDPR will enhance trust in the digital economy and therefore promote the expansion of Europe’s digital economy. As somebody who has spent a significant portion of the last year on counselling member companies on the GDPR, the immediate compliance burden looms larger than the possible innovation opportunity.  Nonetheless, there is still scope for European regulators and policymakers to interpret an ...

In 2014, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) celebrated its 100-year anniversary, marking over a century as the lead consumer watchdog based on its broad authority established by Sec. 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” The Commission has demonstrated that after a century, their Section 5 authority is flexible enough to keep pace with rapid technological evolution.  For instance, as SIIA has highlighted in a recent policy paper, the FTC settlement with TRENDnet demonstrated that the FTC’s regulatory authority is indeed applicable to the Internet of Things (IoT).  The FTC v. Wyndham demonstrated that while data security is not explicitly identified in Section 5, the FTC’s unfairness authority includes the ability to protect consumer data from data breaches. While there is little question of the critical value of the FTC as the lead regulator and enforcer of consume ...

U.S. Top Court Mulls Boosted Patent Damages in Stryker, Halo Cases (Reuters) The U.S. Supreme Court showed that they may be willing to relax the standard held by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit where to be awarded damages in a patent suit, the patent owner “must prove a defendant acted despite a high likelihood of infringement and had no reasonable explanation to do so.”