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Wait, What? Administration Now Designates “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” as Not Economically Significant

Client Alert | 1 min read | 05.10.16

In a sign that the Obama Administration may be preparing to rush the publication of the FAR Council’s final rules implementing the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” executive order so as to avoid timing problems associated with the Congressional Review Act, the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (responsible for reviewing the rules before sending them to the FAR Secretariat for publication, discussed here) now lists the new rules as not “Economically Significant.” That determination allows the administration to avoid the requirements under EO 12866 to provide a more detailed assessment of the likely benefits and costs of the regulatory action, but it reverses the administration’s prior designation of these burdensome new compliance and reporting obligations, and it seems at odds with the designation of other rules, such as “Serving Sizes of Foods That Can Reasonably Be Consumed at One Eating Occasion” and “Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential Dehumidifiers,” as Economically Significant.

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Client Alert | 8 min read | 06.30.25

AI Companies Prevail in Path-Breaking Decisions on Fair Use

Last week, artificial intelligence companies won two significant copyright infringement lawsuits brought by copyright holders, marking an important milestone in the development of the law around AI. These decisions – Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta (decided on June 23 and 25, 2025, respectively), along with a February 2025 decision in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence – suggest that AI companies have plausible defenses to the intellectual property claims that have dogged them since generative AI technologies became widely available several years ago. Whether AI companies can, in all cases, successfully assert that their use of copyrighted content is “fair” will depend on their circumstances and further development of the law by the courts and Congress....