The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced several new artificial intelligence (AI) enhancements to its trademark search system and to the Trademark Center, continuing its broader effort to modernize trademark examination and improve both searchability and application quality. One of the most notable updates is a new beta image-search capability within the
The Backbone of the Agentic Economy: Building Intelligent Enterprises
At the Semafor World Economy summit, the “Building Intelligent Enterprises” session cut through the usual AI hype with a dose of pragmatic operational reality. While the morning sessions at the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings focused on macro-fiscal policy, this panel, featuring Kunal Kapoor (CEO of Morningstar) and Woodsen Martin (CEO of OutSystems), zeroed
The Data Sovereignty Vise: Two Governments, One Compliance Trap, No Safe Harbor
Editor’s Note: Two governments rewrote the rules on cross-border data within the same week, and the rules point in opposing directions. China’s April 7 Regulations on Industrial and Supply Chain Security impose administrative countermeasures against the very supply chain restrictions that the U.S. Department of Justice’s Data Security Program demands, while the DOJ’s enforcement trajectory—now
From blueprint to reality: Executing CRM modernization without disruption
You’ve aligned on the blueprint. Leadership agrees on the direction. The firm is ready to move forward. This is the moment optimism can turn into implementation anxiety.
In a law firm, where client work always comes first, even small disruptions feel amplified. Without a clear execution model, confidence erodes — and adoption quickly follows.
A
When Admonishing Does No Deterring It May Be Time To Retool
We typed the following question into a simple AI prompt: “What is the difference between admonish and deter?” The response started with “The primary difference between admonish and deter lies in their intent and timing: admonishing is form of active, often verbal correction or warning regarding past or present behavior, while deterring is an act
Coming to an Employer Near You: Los Angeles’ Ever-Rising Minimum Wage
Effective July 1, 2026, the minimum wage rate for the Los Angeles metropolitan area will increase to $18.42. Los Angeles employers are accustomed to minimum wage increases based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) for the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which is published by the Bureau of Labor
One Compliance Program for Two Frameworks: Aligning the EU AI Act and GDPR for Efficiency
As another piece of harmonization legislation, the AI Act is unsurprisingly reminiscent in regulatory philosophy to the GDPR. Many of the same data principles (transparency, accuracy, security) are present, as is an explicit risk-based approach. Understanding precisely where there is overlap with your existing GDPR program is a head start in your AI Act compliance program design. But it is also important to recognize where the two frameworks diverge. The GDPR regulates what happens to personal data, the legal basis for collection, how it is used, how long it is kept, who can access it. The AI Act generally regulates the AI system itself – namely, how it is designed, tested, documented, governed, and deployed. While that difference in regulatory object creates structural differences in inputs and outputs, the framework itself does have a lot of commonalities.
This post suggests a strategy for efficiently building a unified compliance framework for both regimes.
Am I really where I’m supposed to be right now?
It’s two months today since my last “official” work day at McGlinchey Stafford; I figure it’s time for an update on me … and the Sports Dude.
So as we were scrambling to figure out those last days at the firm, the Sports Dude and I were scrambling to figure out what that swollen
What about AI’s Jagged Intelligence?
The NewYorkTimes.com reported “A.I. has always been compared to human intelligence, but that may not be the right way to think about it. What it does well can help predict what jobs it may replace.” The April 15, 2026 article entitled ” How ‘Jagged Intelligence’ Can Reframe the A.I. Debate” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/technology/how-jagged-intelligence-can-reframe-the-ai-debate.html) included these
AI State Regulatory Frontiers: Predictive, Generative, and Agentic Risk
In this episode of Regulatory Oversight, co-host Ashley Taylor, co-leader of Troutman Pepper Locke’s State Attorneys General team, kicks off a multipart series on artificial intelligence (AI) with guests Gurkan Ay and Andrew Coles of Resolution Economics. They unpack what people really mean by “AI” today and why it is critical for risk, compliance, and legal exposure to distinguish among the three primary “flavors” of AI: predictive, generative, and agentic. In practical terms, they explain how predictive tools that score, rank, and classify individuals rely on historical data, how generative AI enables natural-language interaction but introduces risks like hallucinations, and how emerging agentic AI can autonomously plan and execute complex, multistep workflows, creating new governance challenges.