Hunton Retail Law Resource

When developing a retail shopping center, landlords have a vision for what that shopping center will look like. This vision comes to life as the shopping center is leased up and tenants open for business. In order to preserve that vision, and ultimately the marketability of the shopping center, landlords will craft permitted use, prohibited use and exclusive use concepts into their leases to ensure that the shopping center occupants continue to operate in the shopping center throughout the term of their leases in accordance with the landlord’s vision.

On August 2, 2024, Illinois amended its Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), curbing the potential for massive damages and modernizing the law’s written consent provisions. On their face, the amendments are not retroactive.  It remains unclear, however, whether this change in Illinois law will nonetheless be applied retroactively by the courts.

Fake reviews and testimonials for services and products have been under the watchful eye of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for decades. With the proliferation of online bots and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, reviews and testimonials have been even easier to fake in recent years. On August 14, 2024, the FTC announced the Final Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, prohibiting fake reviews and testimonials from being sold or purchased by businesses. Importantly, the Final Rule enables the FTC to seek civil penalties against knowing violators.

In February, we posted about the USPTO’s Inventorship Guidance for AI-assisted Inventions, 89 Fed. Reg. 10043 (Feb. 13, 2024), and how that guidance might affect a retailer in New USPTO AI-Assisted Invention Guidance Will Affect Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies.

The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of BBB National Programs recently announced it completed an investigation into Kidgeni, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) art creator website designed for children. CARU’s determined that Kidgeni is directed to children under 13 and is not in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) or CARU’s Privacy Guidelines.

On Friday, August 2, 2024, the United States sued ByteDance, TikTok, and its affiliates for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA Rule”). In its complaint, the Department of Justice alleges TikTok collected, stored, and processed vast amounts of data from millions of child users of its popular social media app.

We recently posted an article on Hunton’s Privacy & Information Security Law Blog on the hotly contested and highly anticipated ruling from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York involving the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against SolarWinds Corporation and its Chief Information Security Officer.  In a decision issued last Thursday, July 18, SolarWinds beat most of the claims filed by the SEC over the company’s cyber practices.

Our full analysis on the SEC/SolarWinds decision please see:  Judge Dismisses Most of SEC Case Against SolarWinds and Its CISO.

Earlier this week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent cease-and-desist letters to several companies warning them that their products, which were marketed to mimic popular children’s snacks, ran the risk of unintended consumption of the Delta-8 THC by children. In addition to the FDA’s concerns regarding marketing an unsafe food additive, the agencies warned that imitating non-THC-containing food products often consumed by children through the use of advertising or labeling is misleading under Section 5 of the FTC Act. The FTC noted that “preventing practices that present unwarranted health and safety risks, particularly to children, is one of the Commission’s highest priorities.”

We recently posted an article on Hunton’s Insurance Recovery Blog regarding the recent system outages worldwide. Companies should review their insurance policies to determine whether they may provide coverage for lost business income due to the outage. For more information click here.

Earlier this month, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its Spring 2024 Regulatory Flexibility Agenda, which sets out the SEC’s rulemaking agenda for the upcoming year. Some observers may have been wondering if Chair Gensler and the SEC would plan to advance any further rulemaking actions before the November elections. It is true that actions could be taken ahead of the proposed dates in the agenda, but many signs point to the SEC proceeding deliberately and without undue haste with this round of rulemaking. Several agenda items in the proposed and final rule stages from prior RegFlex agendas have been postponed to April 2025.