Blog
On Behalf of Berenzweig Leonard, LLP | February 19, 2020 |
Rocket Docket
In our inaugural posting, we talked about the metrics that support the association of the “Rocket Docket” monicker with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. There is an important procedural feature of the Rocket Docket that lets it continue to move civil cases with speed—one-week non-dispositive…
On Behalf of Berenzweig Leonard, LLP | February 18, 2020 |
Government Contracts
Unlike the automatic stay of performance that protestors get for free at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), stopping contract performance at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (COFC) comes at a price. The COFC recently imposed a $42,000,000 bond on Amazon for stopping performance of the JEDI contract. The…
by Stephanie Wilson | February 18, 2020 |
Government Contracts
A protestor recently learned the hard way that filing a timely agency-level pre-award protest does not preserve those protest claims indefinitely. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) published a solicitation for application development and operations and management support services. After receiving initial offers, the CBP issued two key…
by Declan Leonard | February 13, 2020 |
Business Litigation
Last month, Maryland officially “banned the box” and enacted legislation that prohibits employers from initially seeking job applicants’ criminal records. Maryland now joins the District of Columbia and 13 other states that mandate removing criminal history questions from job applications for private employers. Virginia has not joined these states and…
On Behalf of Berenzweig Leonard, LLP | February 13, 2020 |
Employment & Labor Law
In 2019, Virginia became one of the few states in the nation to pass legislation aimed ataddressing one of the many issues exposed by the #MeToo movement: Non-Disclosure Agreements. Non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, are a legal contract between two parties agreeing to keep confidential, or to limit the disclosure, of…
by Nick Johnson | February 13, 2020 |
Employment & Labor Law
Commonly used non-compete restrictions often found in employment agreements are facing mounting scrutiny on a nation-wide level. Several states, such as California, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, have already largely banned the use of non-competes, and many other states are taking a similar approach to varying degrees. With recent statistics from…
On Behalf of Berenzweig Leonard, LLP | February 13, 2020 |
Business Litigation
Maryland and Virginia are the most recent states taking initiatives to enact consumer-focused privacy laws. They join a growing trend among states to pass privacy protection laws aimed at protecting their residents. The most notable and widely talked about was the California Consumer Privacy Act (also known as…
On Behalf of Berenzweig Leonard, LLP | February 13, 2020 |
Employment & Labor Law
It is time for employers in Virginia to take steps to evaluate their employment records and payroll practices. The Virginia General Assembly enacted an employment records disclosure law requiring employers to furnish current and former employees certain personnel documents upon request. That law took effect on July 1, 2019. …
On Behalf of Berenzweig Leonard, LLP | February 11, 2020 |
Government Contracts
DoD Releases V1 of CMMC Framework On January 30, 2020, DoD released Version 1 of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Framework (CMMC v.1). When fully implemented, this framework will create a unified standard by which all DoD contractors will be required to certify their ability to protect Federal Contract…
by Clyde E. Findley | February 3, 2020 |
Intellectual Property
It’s starting to happen. Artificial intelligence (“AI”) systems have become smart enough to create new inventions. Two recent examples of AI-authored inventions were produced by a system called “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience” or simply “DABUS.” According to Dr. Stephen Thaler, who developed it, DABUS is a…
