Ice Miller attorney Lindsay Miller will be a panel speaker at the discussion, “‘5G is coming!’ What's telecom's next big thing, and why should we care?” during the National Digital Inclusion Alliance’s (NDIA’s) Net Inclusion 2017 conference from May 16-17 in Saint Paul, Minn.

Ice Miller Partner Don Snemis spoke at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law’s Ninth Annual Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Symposium on March 31. He participated on the panel, “From Brownfields to Greenfields in Indiana.”
 
In this blog, catch highlights from Don’s participation on the panel.

Ice Miller’s Internet of Things Industry Group is proud to support the IoT Civic Hackathon, produced by the AT&T Developer Program, on April 21-22, 2017 at Launch Fishers.

“Act now, don’t delay.” That was the important lesson that a federal court recently handed down to franchisors when the court denied Noble Roman’s claim that its franchisee violated the federal Lanham Act. This decision is an important reminder to franchisors that they must be diligent in their efforts to discover violations of the franchise agreement, and to the extent they find any violations, to promptly preserve their right to pursue enforcement and damages.

Brent Huber recently returned from one of the American Bar Association’s largest Continuing Legal Education (CLE) conferences, the Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee CLE Seminar. Brent was a panel speaker.

While there are still a number of various impediments for advancing today’s connected cars into fully autonomous vehicles, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been at the forefront of resolving one of the major issues: vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication guidance.  Most recently, the NHTSA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to establish a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS), No. 150, to mandate V2V communications for new light vehicles and to standardize the message and format of V2V transmissions. Ultimately, the NHTSA does not feel confident that the market will achieve such standardized communication language and protocols without such a mandate on V2V communication systems.

Managing partner Judy Okenfuss has been named a finalist of the Inspire Award for Accounting, Legal and Finance. College Mentors for Kids presents this award to recognize outstanding professionals that have made a profound impact in the lives of their mentees.

The crossroads of America could become the crossroads for connected devices in the Internet of Things. Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness have announced plans for an Indiana IoT lab in Fishers, scheduled to open in the summer of 2017. The IoT lab is part of Governor Holcomb’s Next Level Legislative Agenda. Agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation and logistics are among the industries of focus for IoT in Indiana. 

Investigation and prosecution of corporations is nothing new for the U.S. Department of Justice. In fact, in her September 2015 memorandum on the subject, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates noted that “[f]ighting corporate fraud and other misconduct is a top priority of the Department of Justice.” (https://www.justice.gov/dag/file/769036/download). This renewed focus by the Department on corporate wrongdoing means that companies in all sectors of the economy need to be increasingly vigilant in maintaining and improving their internal compliance programs.

The latest development in the feud between Google and Mississippi’s Attorney General, Jim Hood—a history that can only be described as soap-operatic—is a newly filed lawsuit by Hood against the tech giant. The tumultuous relationship began in 2014 when Hood’s office issued a lengthy subpoena to Google requesting documents and other information related to any “dangerous content” hosted on Google’s networks, under the guise of battling online illicit drug sales. However, shortly after the subpoena was served, the Sony hack occurred, which divulged vast amount of Sony data and emails to the public. Found in the hacked emails were communications that indicated that the Motion Picture Association of America was both instigating and bankrolling Hood’s subpoena in an attempt to crack down on piracy.