Artificial Intelligence

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into commercial and consumer operations, antitrust enforcers around the world are focusing on the new technology’s implications for competition. Our attorneys work at the cutting edge of these issues, advising on how to mitigate risk for companies directly involved in developing and supplying AI technologies and products, as well as those using or impacted by AI. We also represent clients in litigation and investigations involving antitrust and AI and counsel on issues related to pricing, market entrance or exit, and capacity. We serve a broad range of clients on the following issues:

• Algorithmic pricing technologies, including best practices, internal policies, and government investigations.
• Evolution of generative AI technologies and services, including providing advice on various mergers and acquisitions that may trigger the attention of antitrust enforcers.
• Compliance with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act, AI Act, and developing regulations in the UK.

Our team is well- positioned to ensure that our clients' innovations and brands are robustly protected. Our client base includes a diverse array of industries that rely heavily on intellectual property and brand integrity. From entertainment and media companies to tech startups, food and cosmetics companies, and established digital services corporations, our clients trust us to provide strategic advice and legal solutions that align with their business objectives. Our services include:

• Drafting and negotiating robust contracts in creative sectors such as broadcasting, music, publishing, and advertising.
• Counseling on the use of generative AI in media and advertisements, including hot-button issues like deepfakes, AI-generated content, AI-powered chatbots, right of publicity, image rights, the trustworthiness of information, and false claims.
• Drafting AI policies and providing bespoke internal training.
• Handling high-stakes litigation and pre-litigation advisory work related to AI and generative AI.

Crowell represents clients engaged in all aspects of the AI revolution. We serve as outside general counsel to venture capital backed AI companies across a wide range of industries. Our corporate and transactions team focuses on representing clients in a variety of business transactions, including:

• Mergers and acquisitions
• Technology transactions and licensing
• Venture capital and private equity financings
• Securities and capital markets
• General corporate governance matters
• Other strategic business collaborations

Crowell & Moring’s Artificial Intellegence team routinly helps clients navigate the complex intersection of law, technology, business, and government contracting. Our team features attorneys that draw upon their deep sector-specific government and industry experience, to advise on AI specific government contracting issues such as:

• Procurements, including bidding and bid protests
• Intellectual property and data rights
• Contract management
• Compliance counseling
• Claims and disputes

We leverage best practices from NIST and IAPP to guide our clients through AI technological advancements and provide strategic counsel to maximize AI's benefits while minimizing risks, in close collaboration with key client stakeholders.

Crowell helps businesses develop and deploy new AI-innovations to the health care market to support treatment, diagnosis, care management, claims, payment, patient engagement, and personalized medicine. Our attorneys understand the convergence of technology and health care policy to advise on the broad spectrum of regulatory issues that affect data protection and privacy in health care. We work with clients to bring innovation into practice by navigating existing and emerging regulations that will govern AI across nearly every industry. We offer services in the following areas:

• Engaging with regulators to provide input on AI policy development.
• Counseling on regulatory and compliance issues related to AI and the use of predictive algorithms.
• Providing consistent policy updates through our custom-built, knowledge management platform service regUp.

Protecting and enforcing proprietary technology in AI, including Generative AI, involves a multidimensional approach. Crowell’s deep bench of IP attorneys, with expertise and experience across a wide array of technologies and industries, assists clients in protecting, enforcing, and defending all aspects of your company’s use of AI systems and technologies. Our experience includes:

• Advising clients on patent eligibility, ownership, and other issues relating to the use of AI technologies.
• Conducting company-wide audits to identify and protect trade secrets in AI.
• Implementing and refining trade secrets policies.
• Negotiating contracts with third parties regarding IP rights.
• Creating revenue streams through licensing models.
• Representing clients in disputes involving patent, trade secret, and copyright aspects of AI technologies.

As AI has quickly and decisively become an integral part of nearly every aspect of organizational operations, our Labor and Employment practice has been at the forefront of development, validation, and implementation of AI tools. Our experience includes:

• Working closely with industry leaders to shape state and local AI regulation and legislation around the U.S.
• Guiding both developers and deployers of AI-based employment decision-making tools through compliance with emerging regulations and with best practices aimed at mitigating risk of employment discrimination and bias.
• Conducting validation studies of AI tools – whether developed in-house or purchased from a vendor – to ensure the quality of the tools and their output, to ensure that the tool performs as expected, and to identify vulnerabilities and mitigate risk, in compliance with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP).
• Collaborating with clients in the tech, professional services, and other sectors to develop comments on federal AI-related guidance across a wide variety of issue areas, including guidance aimed at regulating the use of AI in employment.
• Working with clients to develop AI governance structures to ensure compliance with applicable law, to mitigate litigation risk through thoughtful application of attorney-client privilege principles, and to apply a risk-based approach the use of gen-AI.

The attorneys and professionals in our Government Affairs practice advise clients on the dynamic AI public policy and regulatory landscape. Our AI policy team is at the center of the AI debate on Capitol Hill, the White House, and across federal agencies. We work with our clients to promote policies that will foster innovation and responsibly address policymakers’ concerns about the risks of AI in a host of policy areas, including health care, intellectual property, privacy, cybersecurity, labor and employment, government contracts, export controls, and antitrust. Our services include:

• Working with clients to put them at the heart of policy discussions in D.C. so that they can offer their unique perspectives to policymakers who are considering legislation or regulations that may affect their industries.
• Monitoring new developments in AI policy and law and advise clients on risks and opportunities in the current AI policy landscape.
• Helping clients navigate Congressional and regulatory attention and scrutiny.
• Helping clients respond to high-stakes inquiries and investigations from Capitol Hill and federal agencies.

Companies are developing and using AI and data analytics applications in the International Trade space – enhancing efficiencies, data-use, and communications. While AI opens the door to tremendous innovation and growth, it also raises novel legal and regulatory concerns. Our International Trade Group specializes in all areas of trade—customs, forced labor, trade remedies, export controls, economic sanctions, and global mobility—and is ready to help clients create AI, use AI effectively, navigate the changing landscape of AI law and compliance, and operate at the forefront of AI development. Our experience includes:

• Monitoring developments in AI in order to identify ways that we can help our clients to leverage AI and other technologies in their processes.
• Helping clients comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the European Union Forced Labor Law, and other similar laws by partnering with third party providers to use AI-enabled technology to assist with supply chain mapping – allowing companies to map, screen, and monitor thousands of suppliers and sub-tier suppliers; and to anticipate potential supply chain vulnerabilities and disruptions.
• Exploring the use of AI-enabled technologies to review and assess publicly-available administrative law determinations to streamline preparation of analyses and submissions to demonstrate alleged, illegal dumping or subsidy practices that cause “injury” to domestic industry.
• Helping clients develop best practices, draft defensive-minded contracts, and implement policies to effectively avoid litigation.

We advise clients on legal compliance at the intersection of AI, privacy, and data management. We manage incidents where sensitive data is exposed to third-party AI tools and handle litigation where new AI technology, data privacy, and cybersecurity intersect.

Our services include:

• Developing internal AI policies and guidance.
• Helping organizations comply with domestic and international privacy laws such as the European Artificial Intelligence Act.
• Preparing for and managing data incidents.
• Handling novel privacy and cybersecurity disputes.

AI has rapidly become woven into the fabric of everyday business processes and transactions, and AI litigation is now entering courts and arbitration conference rooms across the globe. With a deep understanding of the intersection of technology and the law, Crowell’s litigation and international disputes teams are at the forefront, representing clients in mission critical AI disputes, including AI-powered IP infringement and data privacy breaches, and responsibly leveraging AI in defending their clients’ interests. The highlights of our practice include:

• Working with clients on a matter-by-matter basis to develop AI-based workflows for discovery in litigation and investigations to maximize efficiency, effectiveness, and defensibility.
• Defending an enterprise AI software provider against a former client that misused confidential information to launch a competing AI device, alleging breach of contract and trade secret violations. Damages in this high-stakes case could range from $500M to $1B.
• Defending a non-profit health care organization in a series of class action lawsuits alleging that an algorithmic pricing tool was used to use artificially depress reimbursement rates paid to out-of-network health care providers to below-competitive levels.
• Having our partner Warrington Parker named a “Top Artificial Intelligence Lawyer” in California in 2024 by the Daily Journal.

Government entities are increasingly regulating the use and abuse of AI. The DOJ has put companies on notice that their compliance programs must assess and mitigate risks of using new and emerging technologies or risk heightened regulatory scrutiny. While the SEC and FTC have warned companies against “AI washing” -- making false and misleading claims regarding the use of AI or the company’s AI capabilities. Our team of seasoned former prosecutors, SEC trial lawyers, and DOJ attorneys has successfully advised our clients for years on the impact of emerging technologies on their criminal and civil risk profiles. Members of the team teach AI law school classes and have obtained the AI Governance Professional (AIGP) certification. Our experience includes:

• Advising multiple clients on their AI-related governance and risk management policies around potential AI use cases, including predictive policing.
• Advising a multinational technology company on risk management and governance procedures related to establishing a subsidiary to provide AI services to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), including ethical principles and regulatory guidance concerning lethal autonomous weapons and weapons systems.