Investigations, Enforcement, & Compliance Alerts

On February 15, 2025, the acting administrator of the United States General Services Administration (GSA), Stephen Ehikian, announced on X (formerly Twitter) that the GSA issued several new deviations from the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) intended to implement key Trump Executive Orders that aim to end illegal discrimination, restore merit-based opportunity, and eliminate the forced use of paper straws in procurement.

On January 15, 2025, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council issued a proposed cybersecurity rule to implement the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Program across all federal agencies.  This Proposed Rule (Proposed Rule) will impose requirements on all federal contractors that are substantially similar to those that DOD contractors and subcontractors have wrestled with for many years.

Government contractors that sell software to the federal government, either directly or indirectly through a reseller agreement, frequently attempt to preserve and protect their copyright and other intellectual property rights by incorporating commercial licensing terms from an End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) into their government contracts. Many in-house lawyers have been closely monitoring questions related to EULA enforceability because the inclusion of favorable terms in a EULA can have a tremendous impact on the rights and obligations of all parties to a contract with the government. Two recent cases from government contract tribunals evaluate the limits on the enforceability of EULAs incorporated into government contracts and show the ramifications of failing to completely understand their terms.