Insights

Washington – August 17, 2023: The 2024 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 47 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 41 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

Washington – August 18, 2022: The 2023 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 54 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 32 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

Washington – January 3, 2022: Crowell & Moring elected 13 lawyers to the firm’s partnership, effective January 1, 2022. The firm also promoted seven to the position of senior counsel and 19 associates to the position of counsel. The new partners have been promoted from within the ranks of the firm’s London, New York, and Washington, D.C. offices and from across several practice groups, including Advertising & Media; Antitrust & Competition; Corporate; Energy; Environment & Natural Resources; Government Contracts; Health Care; Technology & Intellectual Property; International Dispute Resolution; Litigation; Mass Tort, Product, and Consumer Litigation; and Privacy & Cybersecurity.

On July 9, 2024, the CHIPS Research and Development Office released a Notice of Intent (NOI) to announce a third CHIPS Act Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), which will be the first focused on the CHIPS National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program.  The NOFO will provide up to $1.6 billion for research and development activities in five areas of semiconductor advanced packaging, including (1) equipment, tools, processes and process integration; (2) power delivery and thermal management; (3) connector technology like photonics and radio frequency; (4) the chiplets ecosystem; and (5) co-design/electronic design automation.  The NOFO is expected to include prototype development opportunities in exemplar applications including high-performance computing and low-power systems needed for artificial intelligence.  The NOI also provides information about eligibility expectations and other anticipated requirements for applications.

On May 30, 2024, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued a final rule implementing Section 844 of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and Section 854 of the FY 2024 NDAA by amending DFARS 225.7018-2 and accompanying DFARS clause 252.225-7052, which restrict DoD from acquiring certain metals and magnets from “covered countries” of Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China, to prohibit even earlier inputs in the supply chain from occurring in these countries.  Despite comments discussing the infancy of the domestic market for many “covered materials”—defined as samarium-cobalt magnets, tantalum metals and alloys, tungsten metal powder, and tungsten heavy alloy or any finished or semi-finished component containing tungsten heavy alloy—the final rule expands the restrictions on sourcing covered materials from covered countries.  Currently, the rule requires that covered materials not be melted or produced in covered countries but, effective January 1, 2027, the updated rule prohibits covered materials being mined, refined, separated, melted or produced in one of the covered countries. The expansion of the focus of the prohibition all the way back to where these materials were mined is consistent with the U.S. government’s effort to develop the domestic industrial base for and encourage on-shoring of critical minerals, magnets, and metals.   

On May 13, 2024, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued an instruction implementing policies and procedures that DoD will use to identify contractors (including uncleared contractors) requiring foreign ownership, control, and influence (FOCI) determinations, review related information, and address FOCI concerns.  These policies and procedures were put in place pursuant to Section 847 of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act[1] (Section 847).  These FOCI requirements will, for the first time, subject many uncleared DoD contractors to rigorous disclosure requirements, scrutiny, and potential mitigation by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). 

Crowell & Moring is pleased to announce the launch of our Government Contracts Breakfast Series. All of the sessions will be held in Northern Virginia and focus on issues most important to government contractors. Our third session is described below.

Please join Crowell & Moring’s Government Contracts Group on Wednesday, February 8, 2023 at 1:00 p.m. ET for a webinar on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. 

Please join Crowell & Moring’s Government Contracts Group as we discuss 2022 changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS). Among other topics, we will cover: revisions to the Buy America Act; new FAR requirements that certain entities disclose their use of workforce and facilities in China; proposed changes to the DFARS on noncommercial computer software; and new and proposed FAR amendments implementing changes to the Small Business Administration’s regulations.

Join us for this second webinar in our series aimed at exploring best practices in mergers & acquisitions involving government contractors. In this webinar, we will focus on national security-related issues and risks impacting transactions involving government contractors. Topics will include: