Privacy

Robinson and Cole's Privacy Law Initiative brings together attorneys from the firm's Intellectual Property and Technology, Commercial Litigation and E-Commerce Groups. This approach allows us to match just the right resources to our clients' specific need in this emerging and fast-changing area of law.

Our lawyers are knowledgeable about data collection technology, including P3P and cookies. We also understand the value of collecting and using data for marketing and other strategic purposes.

Our lawyers regularly work with federal and state privacy, telemarketing and antispam laws and rules including:

• The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB), the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

• International privacy laws including the European Union (EU) Data Protection Directive, and the U.S./EU Safe Harbor Agreement

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act including the Telemarketing Sales Rule, FTC enforcement actions, and the FTC Fair Information Collection Principles

• State law including workplace privacy statutes, antispam statutes, AG enforcement actions, and other privacy protection statutes and trends

We actively attend FTC and certain state AG-sponsored workshops and programs to keep apprised of privacy initiatives, trends and agendas, and we monitor federal and state privacy law legislative proposals. We also work with advertising agencies to understand the trends and use of collected information.

We assist clients in developing public online and offline privacy policies and complying with privacy policy disclosure laws. We are experienced in advising clients on the sharing and transfer of consumer information, whether a license arrangement, sale, or in the bankruptcy context. We regularly structure arrangements with promoters, marketers, website exchanges, and other third parties for the sharing and care of our clients' customer data.

We also advise clients on the development of internal privacy protection practices. These internal practices are designed to safeguard against accidental or deliberate disclosure of protected or personal information and include a written privacy policy as well as employee education and administrative, technical, and physical safeguards.

Our members represent companies being sued for allegedly breaches of privacy policies or applicable state privacy laws. We currently represent a pharmacy chain in a high profile civil proceeding, a companion case to the recent declaration by a state supreme court that pharmacy customers' privacy rights are not impinged by disclosure of their prescription records to law enforcement officers without a warrant or administrative subpoena.

Our clients include several tax-exempt organizations with significant fundraising activities, general audience websites; catalogue and direct marketing companies, companies with a significant offline database of customer information, computer software companies, companies providing remote monitoring of equipment, and wireless telecommunications service providers.