Regulation

In June, the Supreme Court unanimously held that Enron's former CEO Jeffrey Skilling did not commit "honest services" fraud, ruling that the statute under which he was convicted must be limited to bribery and kickback schemes to avoid constitutional concerns over vagueness. The decision should curtail prosecution of a variety of conduct that the government would otherwise seek to criminalize through the statute. In contrast, the courts are expanding the reach of other criminal statutes to encompass conduct previously regarded as outside their scope.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed a federal RICO claim that alleged the defendants took the basis for their TV program The Great American Road Trip from a TV show idea created by the plaintiffs.

Federal statutes protecting whistleblowers are on the rise. Most recently, the Dodd-Frank Act, meant to overhaul and strengthen federal oversight of the financial system, included workplace protections for whistleblowers in the financial services industry. But that is not the only new law to include whistleblower protections.

Despite huge technological advancements in the 25 years since passage of the SCA, and the ever-increasing prominence of electronic communication in our society, Congress has not amended the SCA to keep pace with changing technology. Rather, courts have had to lead the charge in applying the decades-old statute to modern Internet technology and electronic communication disclosure issues.

Family care issues permeate the workplace, arising in the context of employee recruitment, growth, development and career advancement, and employee requests for time off, flexible schedules and other benefits.

The new UK Bribery Act comes into force in April 2011. It has been described by some as the most draconian anti-corruption law in the world.

Section 922 of Dodd-Frank created awards of 10%-30% of monetary sanctions for whistleblowers who report to the SEC original information leading to securities law enforcement actions that recover more than $1 million. Here are 10 actions organizations might take to help mitigate the increased regulatory risk this change may create.

As with domain names, social networking user names are often an extension of a person's or an organization's identity. Businesses, for example, use social networking identities to promote themselves as a source of goods and services. And the flip side of that coin is that abusive use of social networking user names allows a third party to benefit from the goodwill by-product endorsement. But here's the problem: Such abusive behavior constitutes intellectual property infringement.