This Week in 30 Minutes
by: Diego Ibazeta Lucero, Mabel Kim Taveras, and Hugues Duron
August 15th, 2020
Hi there! We are two economists-to-be sharing + one Business & Law major sharing with you, every Saturday, what we believe are the most relevant and interesting news of the week. The newsletter will be divided between all of our LinkedIn profiles. Please share, like, and comment all your thoughts and suggestions. Enjoy!
Regulatory news
Hong Kong Still Leads in International Dispute Resolution, but Singapore is Catching Up
The difference between the number of new cases filed at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre and the Singapore International Arbitration Center narrowed to 24 cases in 2019 from over 100 cases in 2018. Amid the worst political crisis in recent memory, Hong Kong continues to attract more international arbitrations than longtime rival Singapore, but the Southeast Asian city-state is closing in. Read more here.
London's High Court Refuses to Release $1B in Gold to Venezuela
The ruling clarifies the U.K.'s position on who it sees as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, while withholding crucial aid to fight COVID-19. A British judge has denied a request to transfer $1 billion in gold for relief efforts to fight COVID-19 in Venezuela, arguing that the U.K. does not recognize Nicolás Maduro as the rightful leader of the South American country. Read more here.
Life After the Privacy Shield: Standard Contractual Clauses Get Tougher Requirements
Despite the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidating the Privacy Shield, EU to U.S. data transfers aren't dead. But stiffer data collection and security protocols, and government intervention, will now be needed. On July 16, the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the Privacy Shield, a program leveraged by companies to transfer European citizens’ personal data to the U.S., due to a lack of remedies against potentially unrestricted U.S. government access. Read more here.
Will COVID-19 Vaccines Be Subject to Compulsory Patent Licenses?
Granting patents in favor of a specific company or organization could undermine the development and wide-scale distribution of virus treatments, lawyers say. As the COVID-19 virus permeates more corners of the world, lawyers anticipate an increase in litigation related to the scope of patents for treatments and vaccines. Read more here.
Epic Games wins support from 'Fortnite' gamers, firms on Apple standoff
Fortnite” creator Epic Games found support from its legions of gamers, Tinder-owner Match Group and Spotify for suing Apple and Google after the tech giants dropped the popular video game from their app stores for violating payment guidelines. Epic Games started a social media campaign against the iPhone maker by releasing a parody of Apple’s iconic “1984” commercial in its video game, and soon the hashtag “#FreeFortnite” was trending on Twitter. Gamers with hundreds of thousands of YouTube followers took to the video-streaming platform and other social media platforms to share their thoughts on the situation and show their support. In a statement on Thursday, Apple said “Fortnite” was removed because Epic had launched the payment feature with the “express intent of violating the App Store guidelines” after having had apps in the store for a decade. Read more here.
Oracle and Salesforce hit with GDPR class action lawsuits over cookie tracking consent
The use of third party cookies for ad tracking and targeting by data broker giants Oracle and Salesforce is the focus of class action style litigation announced today in the UK and the Netherlands. The suits will argue that mass surveillance of Internet users to carry out real-time bidding ad auctions cannot possibly be compatible with strict EU laws around consent to process personal data. The litigants believe the collective claims could exceed €10BN, should they eventually prevail in their arguments — though such legal actions can take several years to work their way through the courts. Read more here.
Start-up & Tech news
Warner Music acquires IMGN, a social media publishing platform, for under $100M
It’s a whole new playing field these days for music labels and publishers, and today one of the biggies made an acquisition to help it sharpen up its strategy to better understand what people want to see and hear online today. Warner Music — with a market cap of $15.4 billion, one of the big three recording giants (alongside Universal and Sony) is acquiring IMGN Media, a Tel Aviv and New York-based startup that builds and tracks viral social media content in categories like esports and gaming, ASMR and entertainment. IMGN used to be called Comedy.com. It widened its remit from simply funny stuff and rebranded in 2017, and according to its site has about 3 billion views per month and has some 40 million subscribers to its content, with some 85% of that classified as “Gen Z and millennials.” Read more here.
Facebook pushes back against Apple’s App Store fees
Facebook joined the growing ranks of companies publicly complaining about the 30% fee that Apple collects on payments made through its App Store. Those complaints came midway through a blog post about the social network’s new feature supporting paid online events. Facebook said that to support struggling businesses, it won’t be collecting any fees on those events, at least for the next year, which means that those businesses keep 100% of payments on the web and on Android. But Facebook said that won’t be the case on iOS, due to App Store fees, and it took aim at Apple with surprisingly direct language. Read more here.
Clearview AI landed a new facial recognition contract with ICE
The controversial facial recognition software maker Clearview AI has a new contract with ICE, the most controversial U.S. government agency. Clearview was already known to work with the branch of Homeland Security fiercely criticized for implementing the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies. The new contract makes it clear that relationship is ongoing — and that Clearview isn’t just playing a bit part in tech’s lucrative scrum for federal contracts. First spotted by tech watchdog Tech Inquiry, the new contract is worth $224,000 and will provide the agency with what is only described as “Clearview licenses,” likely just access to the company’s software services. Read more here.
Impossible Foods gobbles up another $200 million
Impossible Foods has raised $200 million more for its meat replacements. The new round values the company at a Whopper-sized $4 billion valuation, according to the data tracker PrimeUnicorn Index. The new round was led by Coatue, a technology-focused hedge fund; another New York-based hedge fund, XN, also participated in the round. Since its launch the company has raised $1.5 billion from investors, including Mirae Asset Global Investments and Temasek. The presence of these new public/private investment firms on Impossible Foods’ cap table could mean that the company is readying itself for an initial public offering, but that’s just speculation. Read more here.
The next-gen Xbox will ship in November
The last few months have provided a steady trickle of information about the next Xbox console — or the Xbox Series X, as it’s known. We know what it looks like. We know a lot about what’s inside. We know about more than a dozen titles currently being built for it. One thing we didn’t know was when it’d actually hit the shelves. Microsoft had said it’d be ready by the holidays, but held off on getting much more specific than that. Today they’re tightening up that launch window a bit: it’ll ship sometime in November, says the company. Read more here.
Google, Nokia, Qualcomm are investors in $230M Series A2 for Finnish phone maker, HMD Global
Mobile device maker HMD Global has announced a $230M Series A2 — its first tranche of external funding since a $100M round back in 2018 when it tipped over into a unicorn valuation. Since late 2016 the startup has exclusively licensed Nokia’s brand for mobile devices, going on to ship some 240M devices to date. HMD’s smartphones run on Google’s Android platform, which gives the tech giant a firm business reason for supporting the mobile maker in growing the availability of Google-packed hardware in key growth markets around the world. Read more here.
See you next week!