Meta fined £1.5m by CMA

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) has issued Meta (Facebook’s parent company) with a £1.5 million fine for failure to comply with an Interim Enforcement Order (“IEO”) imposed under the CMA’s investigation of the company’s acquisition of Giphy. The fine follows an earlier fine of £50.5 million imposed by the regulator in October 2021.…

International data transfer agreement and addendum laid before Parliament

On 28 January 2022, the final version of the international data transfer agreement (“IDTA”) and the international data transfer addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses (“SCCs“) for international data transfers has been laid before the UK Parliament. This follows the ICO’s public consultation which was launched in August 2021. If there are no…

Facial Recognition Data Privacy Fine: ICO publishes provisional intention to fine Clearview AI Inc over £17 million for Facial Recognition data handling

On 29 November 2021, following a joint investigation with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (‘OAIC’) into Clearview AI Inc’s (‘Clearview’) data processing practices, the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’) announced its provisional notice of intent to impose a fine of just over £17 million on Clearview. Additionally, the ICO issued a preliminary enforcement notice…

CMA publishes consultation on modified Google commitments

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) has today published a Notice of intention to accept modified commitments from Google in its Privacy Sandbox investigation (the “Notice”). The Notice follows a consultation on proposed commitments published in June 2021. The modified commitments include substantial amendments to those original proposals, and the Notice provides the CMA’s…

EU General Court Google Shopping Decision may boost prospects for future damages claims

Google appealed against the European Commission’s findings in its 2017 Google Search (Shopping) Decision in the General Court (GC); however, the GC has dismissed Google’s action and upheld the €2.42bn fine imposed by the Commission in a judgment published on 10 November 2021. The GC found that Google had engaged in anti-competitive activity, having favoured…