Switzerland is THE Blockchain Nation and the Government is ready to support the developments with the relevant framework conditions. We are ready for the pace and the exchange with the private sector,” according to President of the Swiss Confederation Ueli Maurer. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the world for seven years in a rowand the Swiss Federal Council—our executive branch—intends to have Switzerland remain a leading country in technology, innovation, and research and development in every...

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By Victoria de Posson | FTI Consulting Last week the EU published its new ethics guidelines for trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI), ten months after the European Commission created its high-level expert group to look into the issue. Our Brussels team look at what future EU policy initiatives might arise as a consequence. While it might be somewhat early to speculate, we can already start to read between the lines and anticipate some potential upcoming initiatives concerning privacy, data, security, transparency, fairness...

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Ahead of the global climate conference COP24, which took place in Poland on 3-14 December 2018, the European Investment Bank launched a first-of-its-kind climate survey, in partnership with the global public opinion company YouGov, to find out how 25 000 citizens feel towards climate change in the European Union, the United States and China. Discover below some analysis and visualisations of the key findings from the fifth of six releases of this worldwide EIB climate survey. You can download the full results...

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By Benjamin J. Eichel & Matthew H. Adler | Pepper Hamilton  The U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated with increasing frequency over the past 20 years a particular fascination with arbitration. There have been at least 20 Scotus cases in the past decade on arbitration, including three cases in the current term—two in the first week in October. By contrast, even though there remains far more cases in federal court than in arbitration, and even though personal jurisdiction is both a frequently...

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On March 26, 2019, the European Parliament voted in favor of the new Copyright Directive, in the text resulting from the Trilogue. The Directive contains a variety of provisions concerning, among others, the status of the press, cultural heritage institutions and digital platforms. It tackles the use of journalistic content online, the measures to be adopted by online platforms in order to identify and prevent copyright infringements and new copyright exceptions such as for text and data mining. The text...

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By Richard P. Eckman, Mark T. Dabertin, Avinoam D. Erdfarb | Pepper Hamilton  The need to control  risks associated with using third-party technology service providers was reemphasized by the FDIC for institutions with less than $1 billion in assets in a new financial institutions letter (FIL) FIL-19-2019, “Technology Service Provider Contracts.” Released on April 2,  2019.  This FIL was prompted by failings in third-party oversight uncovered in recent examinations. It reiterates guidance previously issued in FIL-44-2008, “Guidance for Managing Third-Party Risk,” and emphasizes...

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