On September 18, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) filed its first civil suit alleging violations of broker-dealer registration requirements in U.S. digital asset markets.  In a case filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the SEC alleged that Defendants ICOBox and its founder, Nikolay Evdokimov, illegally conducted an unregistered public securities offering for their 2017 initial coin offering (“ICO”), and have operated an unregistered brokerage service facilitating the…

California’s 2019 legislative session has drawn to a close with passage of five amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) during the final days of the session.  Assuming that the bills are timely signed by the Governor before the October 13 deadline, businesses will finally have the complete version of the statute that will come into effect January 1, 2020 (with the exception of regulations expected to be issued by the California Attorney General…

While the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the “GDPR”) has grabbed headlines due to its extraterritorial reach and administrative fining regime (which permits fines for non-compliance up to the higher of €20 million or 4% of global, annual turnover),[1] a recent decision in the Northern District of California – Finjan v. Zscaler (“Finjan”)[2] – suggests that U.S. Courts won’t view the EU data protection legislation as an absolute obstacle to domestic discovery. …

Responding to a request by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), the EU’s data protection supervisory bodies released an initial joint opinion on the impact of the U.S. Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (“CLOUD Act”) on the EU data protection framework. The preliminary assessment by the European Data Protection Supervisor (“EDPS”) and European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) leaves service providers facing a familiar dilemma. Although the CLOUD…

In February of this year the German antitrust agency, the Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”), issued a decision against Facebook regarding their handling of user data. Please see our previous blog-post detailing the FCO’s arguments here Facebook appealed and on August 26, 2019, the Düsseldorf Court of Appeal (“DCA”) in an interim decision granted suspensive effect to Facebook’s appeal against the FCO decision. The DCA can order suspensive effect to an appeal if it has serious doubts…

In late July 2019, U.S. federal and state regulators announced three headline‑grabbing data privacy and cybersecurity enforcement actions against Equifax and Facebook.  Although coverage of these cases has focused largely on their striking financial penalties, as important are the terms the settlements imposed on the companies’ operations as well as their officers, directors, and compliance professionals—and what they signal about potential future enforcement activity to come.…