Corporate and Business  Law Journal

By: Madeline Sobek

On November 1, 2019, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether SEC disgorgement is permissible as a penalty for securities fraud.

By: William Bassoff

As the next president of the United States, Joe Biden will have a great deal of influence over his administration’s antitrust enforcement. Antitrust enforcement against tech companies’ perceived market power is an increasingly popular idea in the United States. During the current presidency, the Department of Justice and eleven state Attorneys General have brought a civil antitrust suit against Google. Democratic committee members on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust recommended sweeping changes to US antitrust laws in order to prosecute Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook – perceived tech monopolists. This places the United States in a historic moment for antitrust law, with both political parties clamoring for increased antitrust enforcement against tech giants.

By: Adina Weisberg

BigLaw has been slow on improving diversity; top law firms will not even be close to mirroring law school classes until 2057 (for gender diversity) and 2084 (for racial diversity). To address this issue, five firms will work with Diversity Lab, through its Move the Needle Fund (“MTN”), on incorporating experimental methods based on research and data.

By: Catherine Bradshaw
Viral social media star machine TikTok has announced a potential deal with two American companies in an effort to skirt President Trump’s executive order promising to ban the app if it remains under Chinese control. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, is in talks to create a new U.S.-based company, TikTok Global, of which Oracle and Walmart, both American companies, would own 20 percent. President Trump voiced approval of the deal, stating he has “given the deal [his] blessing.” This statement came following weeks of increasing tensions between the U.S. government and the social media giant over allegations from Trump officials that the Chinese government could use the app to steal data from American users and threatens U.S. national security.

By: Nicholas Beatty

On November 6, 2019, Plaintiff Gerald Lovoi, derivatively on behalf of Netflix, Inc. (“Netflix”), brought a stockholder derivative complaint against the company’s board of directors (the “Board”) and executive officers.

By: Nick Kandas

This week (February 25, 2020) in Personalized Media Communications LLC v. Google LLC, Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Texas asked the parties to provide briefing on the impact of a federal circuit decision on this case. Personalized Media Communications responded by writing that machines, in this case servers, are agents of Google. Unpacking how Personalized Media arrived at this incredulous claim requires a quick and exciting dip into the world of patent venue.

By: Dallin Hendricks

Regulation S-K provides detailed instructions for the registration statement and prospectus issuers use in an offering of securities. On November 9, 2020, three amendments to Regulation S-K will go into effect. The SEC explained that these amendments were intended to “modernize the description of business, legal proceedings, and risk factor disclosures that registrants are required to make pursuant to Regulation S-K.”

By: Olivia Stitz

Gone are the days where companies are forced to decipher and interpret the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) published declination letters. After supplementing Title 18 Sentencing Guidelines with its April 2019 Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs, the DOJ left a gaping hole in how they would evaluate Inability-to-Pay claims.