A Blog About Current Issues in White Collar Defense

After much uncertainty and discussion, the U.S. Department of Justice has finally issued official guidance regarding who qualifies as a “foreign official” under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). This guidance was published on November 14, 2012, in the Resource Guide to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a broad guide to enforcement and interpretation… Read More

The intersection of domain names and the First Amendment is not new. Indeed, in the early days of the domain name system, courts considered the issue of whether a domain name registrar could prohibit the registration of domain names on the basis of content – for instance, domain names containing profanities. See Nat’l A-1 Advertising,… Read More

Reuters recently quoted Tian Lipu, head of China’s State Intellectual Office, complaining about China’s reputation for rampant software piracy. According to Tian, “China is the world’s largest payer for patent rights, for trademark rights, for royalties, and one of the largest for buying real software . . . We pay the most. People rarely talk… Read More

Lawyers for Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former federal contractor employee accused of unlawfully disclosing sensitive information, recently filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia criticizing the government’s withholding of information in the case and asking the court to order the government to produce the documents. The government should not… Read More

On October 24, 2012, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff sentenced Rajat Gupta to 24 months after he was found guilty by a jury of one count of conspiracy and three counts of substantive securities fraud, in connection with providing material non-public information to convicted inside trader Raj Rajratnam. This two-year prison sentence was substantially below… Read More

A draft of the online poker bill that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) plan to introduce was released this week. The bill, known as the “Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer Protection, and Strengthening UIGEA Act of 2012” would legalize online poker at the federal level, a step that became possible last… Read More

On October 23, 2012, the European Commission will unveil a series of initiatives and actions that it plans to put into effect relating to online gaming with the overall goal of providing a better framework for online gambling services in the European Union. One of the main problems that the European Commission is facing is… Read More

We have previously advocated for the Department of Justice to employ a more narrow reading of the term “foreign official” in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Therefore, we were pleased to see that the DOJ recently issued an opinion that parsed the definition and came to the conclusion that a member of a foreign royal… Read More

In an aggressive step against businesses selling drugs online, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, took legal action earlier this month against more than 4,100 websites this week that led to criminal charges, seizures of illegal products, and hundreds of domain name seizures. This year Operation… Read More