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California employers with 26 or more employees must now comply with a new supplemental COVID-19 paid sick leave law that requires employers to provide employees who qualify with up to 80 hours of supplemental paid sick leave. Employers need to take several actions to ensure compliance with the new law. Read the full article here.

Proposed legislation currently in the California Senate seeking to impose new reporting requirements for emissions arrives as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering climate-related public company disclosure requirements. It is likely the case that the California legislation and accompanying California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations will go beyond what is ultimately required by the SEC. Read the full article here.

The split among district courts as to whether the filing of a patent infringement complaint provides notice to a defendant of its infringing conduct sufficient to support a claim of willful infringement could spell the end of a claim for enhanced damages. Or, based an a recent District of Delaware case, maybe it won’t. Read the full article here.

It has now been two years since a U.S. district court issued a ruling providing an additional avenue for U.S. trade secrets owners to take legal action against alleged misappropriation abroad. Since then, several other district courts have upheld the Defend Trade Secrets Act’s extraterritorial reach in civil law, giving trade secret owners a powerful tool to combat international trade secret theft in the U.S. civil court system. Read the full article here.

Data security and privacy will continue to be critical in the coming year. Over the past year, federal agencies issued new cybersecurity regulations and updated guidance. Data security and privacy laws were passed and/or updated. Cyberattacks exploited various security vulnerabilities, and remote work continued to make organizations of all sizes susceptible. These trends will require organizations to remain vigilant about their cybersecurity posture and regularly review their data practices and policies with the help of trusted advisors. Evolving Cybersecurity. Read the full article here.

The California Supreme Court, in a critical decision, has answered a key question regarding whistleblower retaliation claims. Read the full article here.

Many California medical staffs may be looking to start 2022 with updated bylaws. A recent case, Bichai v. Davita, Inc. (2021) 72 Cal.App.5th 1126, stands as a reminder that the bylaws cannot set forth a stricter burden of proof to be applied at a judicial review hearing than what is prescribed by California law. Read the full article here.

Effective May 7, 2022, New York’s Civil Rights Law will require private employers to notify employees of electronic monitoring of their workplace electronic communications. The new law applies to any private employer in New York State that “monitors or otherwise intercepts” any employee’s “telephone conversations or transmissions, electronic mail or transmissions, or internet access or usage of or by any electronic device or system.” Read the full article here.

In September of 2015, Interprofession du Gruyère filed an application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) to register the term GRUYERE as a certification mark. With a certification mark registration in place, to use the word GRUYERE in association with cheese would require the cheese a certification process confirming that it originates from the Gruyère region of Switzerland and France. U.S. Dairy Export Council (as well as several other parties) filed an opposition to the mark arguing that US customers understand the term GRUYERE to indicate a type of cheese having certain characteristics involving taste and softness, etc., but that it could be produced anywhere, not necessarily in Switzerland or France. Read the full article here.

In a new precedential Federal Circuit decision, Kyocera Senco Industrial Tools Inc. v. ITC, that impacts both patent prosecutors and litigators, the court again demonstrated the reach of its recent expansion of language that might render claim language as a “means plus function” limitation. Read the full article here.

The European Court of Human Rights has finally brought an end to the case in which a bakery in Northern Ireland was alleged to have discriminated against a customer who want a gay rights message on a cake. Read the full article here.

On January 13, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (“OSHA”) Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”), effectively halting OSHA’s enforcement of the ETS days after it was scheduled to come into force. Read the full article here.