One of the luxury industry's leading general counsel is calling on the US to create a unified privacy standard to avoid a deluge of class actions. Giorgio Armani head of legal Hank Rouda, who is speaking at the Luxury Law Summit in New York, says that the current patchwork of privacy legislation is creating serious issues for retailers and Congress needs to act. "Privacy laws in the US are exploding and are creating a wide variety of issues for all retailers," Mr Rouda told the Global Legal Post. "The patchwork nature of these regulations are not only not protecting the individuals but they are adding costs and uncertainty on the parts of the retailer." He warned that "Congress’ lack of national legislation leaves everyone open to potential conflicts and creates the certainty of ever increasing class action lawsuits " and advocated Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a blueprint for the US. 

Luxury leaders gather in New York

Mr Rouda was speaking in the run-up to the annual gathering of luxury lawyers and businesses in New York on 13 November which will see leaders from the sector engage and discuss the regulatory environment for luxury and retail from insights on the latest developments on e-commerce, tax, trade law and technology to discussions on luxury legal departments and their operations, new markets and geopolitical issues. He will be joined at the event by corporate counsel from the leading companies including Tiffany, Chanel, Gucci, Richemont, Kering, Luxottica, Farfetch, Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors and Coty. For information on attending the Summit, contact [email protected].