1. Home
  2. |Insights
  3. |Administration Moves to Complete FIRRMA Implementation by the February 13, 2020 Statutory Deadline

Administration Moves to Complete FIRRMA Implementation by the February 13, 2020 Statutory Deadline

Client Alert | 1 min read | 09.18.19

Yesterday, the Department of the Treasury released the long-awaited proposed rules that would complete implementation of the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) of 2018 that expanded the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review investments by foreign persons. One proposed rule will revise and restate the general CFIUS regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 800, while the second proposed rule will provide a separate process, 31 C.F.R. Part 802, for CFIUS review of certain real estate transactions that do not involve acquisition of a U.S. business. Among the key elements of FIRRMA addressed in the proposed rules are:

  • Expanded jurisdiction to review non-controlling investments in so-called “TID U.S. businesses”; i.e., companies involved in certain technology, infrastructure or data.
  • Extended mandatory review over acquisition of a “substantial interest” in a “TID U.S. business” by a foreign person in which a foreign government has a “substantial interest.”
  • Exemption of investments by certain foreign persons from certain foreign states (to be identified separately) from CFIUS jurisdiction over “covered investments.”
  • Provision of an option to initiate CFIUS review via a short-form voluntary declaration in lieu of a joint voluntary notice.

The current proposals do not yet seek to implement the statutory authority to impose a fee in connection with CFIUS reviews.

The proposed rules are scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on September 24, 2019, which will trigger a compressed 30-day time frame to submit comments (during which Treasury has suggested it may hold a teleconference with interested participants). The Interim Rule establishing the mandatory declaration under the Critical Technologies Pilot Program remains in effect and both prior comments and any new comments submitted will be addressed when Treasury publishes its final rule.

Contacts

Insights

Client Alert | 6 min read | 08.03.26

The Pipe, Not the Posts: How Section 230’s Protections Extend to Generative AI Platforms

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“Section 230”) protects online platforms from liability for user-generated speech. Based on the premise that platforms generally do not create original content but instead curate their users’ own speech, Section 230’s protections have historically applied to a platform’s algorithmically assembled, selected or sequenced content; algorithms or features that amplified or directed user generated speech to particular users were generally protected. Indeed, the old rule of thumb was the more a platform used algorithms or automation, the more likely user generated speech remained user generated speech. GenAI has the potential to change that calculus. A platform that ingests user generated content and publishes a transformed output, can blur Section 230’s line between publication and creation. The central question is whether Section 230 protects GenAI, which analyzes, but does not alter, user-created content to produce an outcome, and its corresponding outputs....

View All Insights