Digital Commons Network^™

Race Cartels: How Constructor Collaboration Is Curbing Innovation In Formula 1, Chandler C. Gerard-Reimer

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Formula 1 is in the midst of a copycat scandal: technology has made it possible for teams to reverse engineer clones of competitors’ race cars. This is a less than ideal state of affairs for the championship series, which prides itself on being the pinnacle of motorsport and automotive innovation, thanks in large part to the cars’ rapid rate of technological advancement. In order to address this problem, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Formula 1’s governing body, must increase independent innovation efforts by amending the technical regulations to restrict the extent of presently allowed inter-team collaboration. Worried that the …

Confronting The Biased Algorithm: The Danger Of Admitting Facial Recognition Technology Results In The Courtroom, Gabrielle M. Haddad

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

From unlocking an iPhone to Facebook “tags,” facial recognition technology has become increasingly commonplace in modern society. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and call for police reform in the United States, it is important now more than ever to consider the implications of law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology. A study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that facial recognition algorithms generated higher rates of false positives for Black faces—sometimes up to one hundred times more false identifications—than white faces. Given the embedded bias of this technology and its increased prevalence, the …

Similar Secrets, Joseph P. Fishman, Deepa Varadarajan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A foundational question in every dispute over intellectual property is whether the defendant’s product is too similar to the plaintiff ’s. For almost all intellectual property regimes, an extensive body of case law and academic commentary has examined how such similarity should be measured. Trade secrecy, however, remains a remarkable exception. In trade secrecy cases, just as in other intellectual property cases, the defendant’s good or method can diverge markedly from what the plaintiff developed. Yet it turns out that trade secret case law provides little guidance for assessing how much similarity is too much. The standard remains, fittingly but …

We're Friends, Right? Client List Misappropriation And Online Social Networking In The Workplace, Brian V. Wyk

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn have grown tremendously over the past decade, and today they claim over 200 million users between the three services. A great number of smaller social networks have also appeared, and new services are constantly being created. With the vast growth of social networking has come the use of social networking in business. As businesses have sought to exploit the wealth of information that social network users share over these networks, businesses have encountered the problem of protecting the compilations of information they have produced. The problem became clear in 2008 when a …

The Law Of Trade Secrets: Toward A More Efficient Approach, Jon Chally

Vanderbilt Law Review

Trade secret law must efficiently protect that which can be considered a trade secret. Were the law to provide too little protection, information protected as a trade secret would not be created. Were the law to provide too much protection, competition would be unnecessarily stifled. Only efficient protection, meaning neither too little nor too much, appropriately addresses the unique nature of trade secrets as intellectual property. Such a conclusion becomes increasingly necessary given the rising import of trade secret law in the spectrum of intellectual property.

"It is the policy of the law, for the advantage of the public, to …

Case Digest, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This CASE DIGEST provides brief analyses of cases that represent current aspects of transnational law. The Digest includes cases that establish legal principles and cases that apply established legal principles to new factual situations. These cases are grouped in topical categories and references are given for further research.

United States Policy Toward The Transfer Of Proprietary Technology: Licenses, Taxes, And Finance, Gary C. Hufbauer, George N. Carlson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Much of the nation's technology is developed in public institutions, especially universities and government research laboratories, and is freely available through libraries and classrooms. Roughly one-half of total United States research and development expenditures are funded by the United States Government, and the findings from this research are generally available to citizens and foreigners at little or no charge. In addition, a great deal of technology that was once guarded by patents or trade secrets has since passed into the public domain. This paper ignores these freely available segments of the national technology base and discusses proprietary technology.