Business Law Journal

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized how businesses create, communicate, and market.  For trademark owners and AI-utilizing businesses, however, AI brings not only opportunity but also significant risk.  

On December 23, 2024, with the looming January 1, 2025, filing deadline just days away, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a nationwide injunction which had temporarily prohibited the enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and its implementing regulations (including the mandatory beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting rule).

On October 29, 2024, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) announced it was granting limited extensions for certain business entities with respect to the beneficial ownership reporting requirements as required under the Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”). Notably, the limited nature of this relief appears to indicate that there will be no broad extension granted to the current January 1, 2025 deadline by which time Reporting Companies formed prior to January 1, 2024 must file their BOI Report. This article provides a background to the CTA reporting requirements and breaks down which business entities may take advantage of the extension. A more detailed discussion on the CTA and its general reporting requirements can be found here. 

With the growing popularity and prevalence of generative artificial intelligence, courts are increasingly being called upon to decide novel legal issues based on never-before-seen phenomena that are challenging the traditional paradigm applied to human-generated content.  And copyright law is no exception.

In VFLA Eventco, LLC v. William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC, the California Court of Appeal recently affirmed the importance of drafting a contract with a clear understanding of every word and clause, and the effect each has on the contract as a whole.

In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that when a junior trademark user uses a parody of a famous trademark as an indicia of source for its own goods, the junior user cannot rely on the First Amendment to shield it from liability for trademark infringement for artistic or so-called “expressive works,” nor the parody exception to trademark dilution claims under the Lanham Act.

[This is the first in a series of blog posts on how businesses should prepare for the California Privacy Rights Act which will enter into force on January 1, 2023]

Although since January 1, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) has required covered businesses (as defined below) to provide notice to California employees and job applicants regarding the types of personal information that a business collects, certain key employee exemptions previously limited the privacy-related requirements for employers and corresponding rights of employees and job applicants.  However, those exemptions are set to expire on January 1, 2023.

With the looming economic downturn, clients, retailers and small businesses are looking to cut costs wherever possible.  Lately, these cost cutting measures have had a significant impact on warehouse operators or companies that store goods, who are caught in the middle of these cost cutting attempts. 

The California homestead exemption has been amended effective January 1, 2021.  Under the new law, the homestead exemption now protects home equity equal to the median home price in the county where the debtor resides, not to exceed $600,000, or $300,000, whichever is greater.  The exemption adjusts annually for inflation.  The homestead exemption should be taken into consideration when the defendant may be personally liable for the judgment.

A California appeals court recently determined that debtors who attempt to avoid debt collection by moving their assets out of state and into a different legal form may be liable for fraudulent transfer under California law.  On January 7, 2021, the California Court of Appeals issued a decision in Nagel v. Western (2021) 59 Cal.App.5th 740.  In Nagel the court held that under California’s Uniform Voidable Transactions Act (the “UVTA”), “physically relocating personal property and transmitting or transporting sale proceeds out of state, then transmuting them into a different legal form, may constitute a direct or indirect mode of parting with assets or one’s interests in those assets.”  This means that such transfers would fall under the fraudulent transfer prohibitions of the UVTA.  In short, debtors can no longer feel safe trying to shield their assets from creditors by moving them out of state and changing their form.  And Creditors have a new mechanism at their disposal to try to access those assets despite such maneuverings on the part of the debtors.