Insights

The week of June 29 brought a flurry of regulatory activity from the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) impacting companies across sectors including airlines, supersonic aircraft manufacturers, drone operators, and owners/operators of critical infrastructure facilities.  A summary of the key developments is below.

On June 4, 2026, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI-5) introduced a bill that would limit the ability of people and entities seen as threats to U.S. national security to obtain and enforce patents. If enacted, the Prohibiting Adversarial Patents Act of 2026 (H.R. 9142) would leverage use of patent law as a national security tool, with consequences for companies operating in technology-intensive sectors, including drones, telecommunications, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing. The proposed legislation, currently under review by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, is particularly focused on persons and entities with connections to the People’s Republic of China.

The EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is an EU product cybersecurity law for connected products (formally, “products with digital elements” under the CRA) commercialized in the EU; it entered into force on 10 December 2024, with direct application across the EU. Full application begins 11 December 2027, but one of its most operationally demanding provisions takes effect in just under 100 days, on 11 September 2026: the mandatory vulnerability and incident reporting under Article 14 CRA.