United States: Technology

Manufacturing and industrial companies have spent 2026 navigating strong growth opportunities alongside a more complex legal and business landscape. Strategic M&A has remained active across infrastructure, automation, energy, defense, and specialized industrial services, while tariff exposure, financing conditions, labor issues, cybersecurity, supply chain requirements, and export controls have continued to shape deal strategy and operational planning. Companies pursuing transactions, expansion, government contracting opportunities, or supply chain changes should evaluate these issues early to protect value, preserve flexibility, and move quickly when opportunities arise.

A federal court dismissed an FCA case against Archer Daniels Midland alleging false cybersecurity representations, establishing that regulatory noncompliance alone is insufficient without proof the government relied on those representations in payment decisions. The ruling clarifies the high materiality threshold for cybersecurity-based False Claims Act litigation and underscores what relators must demonstrate when alleging fraud through implied certification theories.

Critical infrastructure organizations face new cyber incident reporting requirements under CIRCIA, requiring careful preparation and strategic planning. Understanding how to establish clear reporting protocols, coordinate communications, and manage vendor dependencies will be essential for compliance. Organizations must proactively engage cyber and legal expertise to navigate these regulatory obligations effectively.

Two bodies of export regulations typically come to mind when we think of export controls: the Export Administration Regulations of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations ...

The 2026 International Hotel Investment Forum EMEA revealed critical challenges facing the hospitality industry, from geopolitical tensions affecting Middle East markets to yield compression threatening profitability. Industry leaders grappled with how artificial intelligence will reshape booking channels and operations while maintaining the human touch that defines hospitality.

As AI agents begin to autonomously execute commercial transactions, a critical question emerges that precedes all others: will the platforms, merchants, and payment providers that control transaction infrastructure even allow these agents to participate? The architecture of access control is being built now, and it may determine the future of agentic commerce more than any legal doctrine.

With the ever-growing barrage of rhetoric over just how, when, and if, AI will kill us all, the conversation also lends itself to, do we believe it will be AI that kills us, or a bad actor using AI? If I showed you a picture of East Asia at night from space and pointed out that you can’t see North Korea for the lack of available electricity, (It’s 99% blacked out, and only Pyongyang shows a small cluster of light) would you think for a minute that they would have the tech savvy, and high end software, or even hardware, necessary to steal $6.7 billion in crypto since 2017?

Under the direction of Chairman Paul Atkins, the SEC has defined AI-washing as a materially false or misleading statement concerning a firm’s use of artificial intelligence to manage financial assets and/or to predict market trends. If a firm claims its returns are generated by a “proprietary neural network” but is, in fact, actually utilizing standard quantitative models or manual trading, it may be inviting an enforcement action under the antifraud provisions of the Advisers Act under the Federal Securities Laws.

The Ninth Circuit held that GitHub Copilot's AI-generated code did not violate DMCA's copyright management information (CMI) removal provisions, even when output resembled source code, because the system generated new works through probabilistic patterns rather than retrieving and stripping information from existing copies. This decision establishes a critical distinction between AI systems that learn and generate versus those that retrieve and reproduce, with significant implications for how courts evaluat

Recent federal court decisions are challenging long-standing interpretations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's consent requirements for pre-recorded calls to cell phones.

Through our Viewpoints series, Riveron experts share their opinions on current topics, business trends, and industry news.

Effective January 1, 2025, California law AB 2426 will require companies offering online-only digital goods to disclose that consumers are purchasing a limited-duration license...