Tech Policy & Regulation Weekly — Aug 13, 2026

This was a week of operational rules, not grand new theories. Washington put recycled battery material behind an export gate. Brussels pulled packaging and synthetic-content disclosures into everyday compliance. Courts kept reshaping the economics of networking mergers and app-store payments.

The common thread is clear: regulators are moving upstream—toward the foundry, the recycler, the package designer and the software interface, where business decisions become difficult to reverse.

“Black mass” sounds like science fiction. It is shredded material recovered from used batteries, rich in lithium, cobalt, nickel and other valuable minerals—and the Bureau of Industry and Security now treats it as strategically important.

According to National Law Review coverage, the Commerce Department issued a temporary final rule on August 6 restricting exports of black mass and tungsten waste and scrap. Beginning August 27, affected sellers must allocate their monthly supply to U.S. customers unless the Bureau of Industry and Security grants an adjustment or exception. The allocation order is scheduled to remain in effect through August 27, 2027. (Commerce Publishes Temporary Final Rule Restricting Export of "Black Mass" From )

That shift turns recycling contracts into export-control documents. U.S. battery recyclers may gain a protected domestic market, while overseas buyers and multinational manufacturers may need new suppliers, redesigned contracts or Commerce Department relief. (Commerce Publishes Temporary Final Rule Restricting Export of "Black Mass" From )

Everything now turns on enforcement. The rule matters only if the Bureau of Industry and Security enforces the allocation requirement and keeps exceptions narrow. Watch the agency’s first adjustment decisions—and whether foreign customers begin financing recycling capacity outside the United States. (Commerce Publishes Temporary Final Rule Restricting Export of "Black Mass" From )

A $14 billion networking deal now has a court-approved path forward. Bloomberg Law reported on August 13 that U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts approved the settlement allowing Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks to proceed.

The Justice Department had alleged that Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Cisco would control more than 70% of the U.S. enterprise wireless-networking market after the deal. Its settlement requires Hewlett Packard Enterprise to divest the Instant On business and auction a perpetual license to Juniper’s Mist artificial-intelligence operations software. California and 12 other jurisdictions argued that those remedies were insufficient.

The decision gives merger lawyers a potentially important template. A technology license, paired with a targeted divestiture, may sometimes answer a challenge that began as an argument against the entire transaction. Buyers gain more room to design remedies around intellectual property rather than sell a complete overlapping business.

The test comes next. Failure would look like an appeal by the intervening jurisdictions—or a licensed Mist competitor that never becomes commercially credible. The clearest signal will be who acquires the license and whether that buyer can win customers without Juniper’s full organization behind it.

In Europe, the box is no longer legally separate from the product. The European Union’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation began applying across the bloc on August 12. It covers packaging regardless of material or origin and introduces requirements involving composition, reuse, restricted formats and the reduction of harmful substances.

For electronics companies and online retailers, the practical lesson is simple. Inks, coatings, cushioning and supplier declarations can all become compliance evidence, especially when one package design serves several markets.

Companies with disciplined material records should gain an advantage over businesses that discover too late that their suppliers cannot document what is inside a coating or adhesive. But adoption will fail if European Union member states apply the rules inconsistently or provide too little enforcement guidance for manufacturers to redesign at scale.

Watch the retailers. If large retailers begin demanding standardized packaging declarations from suppliers, procurement departments—not environmental regulators—will become the fastest route to enforcement.

Apple cannot freeze a fight over payments it does not process. Courthouse News reported that U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers refused on August 11 to pause proceedings over Apple’s commission on “linked-out” purchases—transactions that begin in an iPhone application but are completed on a developer’s website.

Apple sought a pause while the U.S. Supreme Court considers a contempt finding arising from the Epic Games litigation. Instead, the federal district court will continue examining what commission, if any, Apple may charge on those external purchases.

That leaves an awkwardly concrete question at the center of the dispute: how much can Apple collect from a payment it does not process? Developers win if the court sets a low rate that makes external checkout economically worthwhile. Apple wins if it preserves enough commission revenue to make linking out largely cosmetic.

The market will supply the answer. Non-adoption is easy to spot: developers will leave Apple’s payment system only if the savings exceed the cost of running their own checkout and handling customer support. Watch the eventual rate—and then watch whether major developers actually use it.

French publishers are asking regulators to treat Google’s AI summaries as an antitrust problem. Brussels Signal reports that nearly 300 French daily newspapers, represented by the Alliance de la Presse d’Information Générale, filed a complaint with France’s Competition Authority over Google’s artificial-intelligence search summaries. (French Newspapers File Competition Complaint Over Google's AI Search Summaries)

The publishers allege that Google is using their material to answer users’ questions directly, reducing the need to visit the original websites. The Alliance attributes a roughly 38% decline in Google-referred traffic to the summaries; that figure is the publishers’ measurement, not a finding by the Competition Authority (as of 2026 survey). (French Newspapers File Competition Complaint Over Google's AI Search Summaries)

If France accepts the publishers’ theory, an AI answer displayed above search results could become more than a copyright issue. It could become an abuse-of-dominance problem, opening the door to placement restrictions, publisher controls or compensation requirements.

The case will turn on causation. The complaint may go nowhere if the Competition Authority cannot connect the traffic decline to exclusionary conduct rather than changing user behavior. Watch whether the authority opens a formal investigation and demands Google’s internal traffic, testing and product-placement data.

Europe is assigning the AI-labeling job to both the maker and the user. The European Commission’s AI Office has published a Code of Practice explaining how providers and users can approach the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act’s transparency requirements for generated and manipulated content. The underlying transparency rules began applying on August 2.

The division of labor matters. Providers are expected to support machine-readable marking—metadata or watermarking that software can detect—while deployers face disclosure duties in specified circumstances, including deepfakes. The code is guidance rather than a substitute for the Artificial Intelligence Act itself.

If the system works, provenance can travel with an image, video or audio file as it moves between generation tools, advertising platforms and publishers. Vendors that preserve that trail will become easier for European companies to buy.

Failure will look like incompatible watermarking systems, stripped metadata and disclosures that disappear after routine editing. Watch procurement contracts: when customers begin requiring machine-readable marking and downstream disclosure support, the code will have become a market standard without needing to become a separate law.

A battery recycler guarding a barrel of black powder. An app developer calculating Apple’s cut on a payment Apple never touched. A packaging lawyer interrogating a tube of glue. Regulation has found the supply closet. (Apple’s EU AI problem keeps showing how product design can become regulation)

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration may start publishing rejection letters, because apparently even “no” is becoming a data product.

Keep your metadata attached.

Forward this to the person who still thinks the box is just the box.