Cooley Law Firm

Artificial intelligence has transformed the way we live, work and even think. While AI offers seemingly endless potential benefits in the workplace – including improvements in efficiency, cost cutting and innovation – employers must balance those benefits with the legal risks of using AI tools in employment processes. Employers using these tools also must attempt to keep up with regulatory and technological developments in a rapidly evolving space. Below, we’ve…

On August 18, 2023, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a first-of-its-kind federal court decision in Thaler v. Perlmutter, et al., agreeing with the US Copyright Office that works generated entirely by artificial intelligence are not copyrightable for lack of human authorship. The court rejected the plaintiff’s argument that copyright’s adaptability to new technologies is expansive enough to contemplate AI authorship.…

In January 2023, the European Union adopted the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which requires EU and non-EU companies with activities in the EU to file annual sustainability reports alongside their financial statements. These reports must be prepared in accordance with European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). On July 31, 2023, the European Commission adopted the first set of ESRS. The ESRS soon will become law and will apply directly in…

San Diego – August 4, 2023 – The California Supreme Court yesterday issued a landmark decision in Turner v. Victoria et al., which ensures essential whistleblower protections for more than 110,000 charities across California. Cooley represented plaintiff and appellant Debra Turner in successfully petitioning the court to review her case and in achieving a sweeping victory on the merits for Turner and for all California charities. Lawyers Steve Strauss, Erin…

The UK government has announced its intention to limit the duration of noncompete post-termination restrictions in employment contracts to a maximum of three months. Noncompete covenants are designed to provide business protection to an employer by seeking to restrict a former employee from undertaking employment with a rival competitor for a defined period following the termination of their employment. Noncompetition covenants are common in employment contracts with senior or key…

In September 2020, the European Commission adopted a digital finance package with the aim of creating a supportive regulatory framework to enable the digital transformation of the European Union’s financial industry. It established the groundbreaking piece of regulation – the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) – to provide a harmonised regulatory framework for crypto-assets in the EU. MiCAR came into force on 29 June 2023, almost three years later, and…

Recently, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) made clear that it intends to make discrimination caused by artificial intelligence (AI) tools an enforcement priority over the next four years. This enforcement priority follows the EEOC’s 2021 announcement of its Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Fairness Initiative, which launched an agency-wide effort to ensure AI tools and other emerging technologies used in making employment decisions comply with the federal civil rights…

Stock issued by a corporation is treated as qualified small business stock (QSBS) only if, among other requirements, at least 80% of its assets (by value) are used by the issuing corporation in the active conduct of one or more “qualified trades or businesses” (the active business requirement) during substantially all of the applicable investor’s holding period for such stock. This requirement has become particularly relevant to many startup and…

On May 3, 2023, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation into law increasing New York’s minimum wage for most employees beginning January 1, 2024, through 2026. Enacted as part of the state’s budget legislation, increases to the minimum wage beginning in 2027 and beyond will be indexed to the consumer price index. Below, we’ve outlined what employers should know about this development. Minimum wage increases, 2024 – 2026 The…

On 19 May 2023, the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology published the National Semiconductor Strategy, setting out the UK’s 20-year vision to grow deep foundations in semiconductor technology, while also bolstering the UK’s national security and resilience in an industry that has suffered supply chain issues and geopolitical tensions. 1. Growing the domestic sector The strategy recognises the importance of semiconductor technology to the growth of the UK…

In a much-anticipated opinion released on June 1, 2023, the US Supreme Court held that the scienter element of the False Claims Act (FCA) turns on the defendant’s “knowledge and subjective beliefs” – not on “what an objectively reasonable person may have known or believed.” The unanimous decision in the consolidated cases, United States ex rel. Schutte v. Supervalu Inc. and United States ex rel. Proctor v. Safeway Inc., held…

Increasingly, many small-cap and microcap public companies are failing to secure stockholder approval of critical proposals, particularly for reverse stock splits and authorized share increases. With heavy concentration of shares held in street name (i.e., by retail investors in US brokerage accounts), these companies historically have relied on brokerage firms to vote retail shares both to establish a quorum – the minimum threshold in voting power of shares that must…