News

New Bay Area Commuter Benefits Program Imposes Obligations on Employers

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

The California Legislature enacted the Bay Area Commuter Benefits Program in 2012 to require certain employers to provide financial incentives to employees to commute to and from work via some means other than driving alone. The law has not...

Department of Energy Announces New Loan Guarantee Program for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Projects

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

The Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office (the “DOE”) announced on April 16, 2014, a new loan guarantee program for up to $4 billion under Section 1703 of Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act. The announcement coincides with the DOE’s release of...

Renewed interest in Mortgage Credit Certificate programs

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

Section 25 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) permits issuers of tax-exempt qualified mortgage revenue bonds to elect to issue mortgage credit certificates (MCCs) to eligible homebuyers in lieu of offering mortgages financed with the proceeds of...

Sports, Media and Entertainment Intelligence - May 2014 (Global)

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

UK: London's IP anti-crime unit shuts down leading sports file sharing site - The City of London’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has successfully shut down the Sports Torrent Network, a leading sports file-sharing site offering its...

Should the H-1B Annual Cap Be Increased?

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

The H-1B visa is a common immigration tool for hiring highly-skilled foreign nationals. Under the H-1 visa program, foreign workers who are employed by U.S. companies in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in...

Wireless Technologies to Be Mandated by NHTSA

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

Recent months have seen major developments in the march toward truly autonomous cars. Google has announced that it has logged almost 700,000 miles of autonomous driving, and that it has been driving many of those miles in urban environments, testing...

Courts Continue To Wrestle With TCPA Consent

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) prohibits non-emergency calls to cell phones using automatic telephone dialing systems or prerecorded voice messages absent the called party’s prior express consent. Text messages are treated as calls...

Singapore Agrees in Substance to FATCA IGA

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

On May 6, 2014, the Ministry of Finance of Singapore announced that Singapore had agreed in substance on a Model 1 FATCA IGA. Under the IGA, Singapore-based financial institutions will report information on financial accounts held by U.S. persons to...

U.S. House Approves Volcker CLO Fix

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

On April 29, the U.S. House of Representatives passed by voice vote HR 4167, a bill that would exclude certain debt securities of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) from the so-called Volcker Rule’s prohibition against holding an ownership...

Biotronik A.G. v. Conor Medsystems: Be Sure to Expressly Exclude Lost Profits in Drafting New York Law Contracts

By EsqSocial Corporation 08/05/14

On March 27, 2014, the New York Court of Appeals held that a provision excluding both parties' liability for consequential damages would not preclude recovery of lost profits that the court found were the direct and probable result of a breach of the...

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