Law Commons^™

Securing Patent Law, Charles Duan

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A vigorous conversation about intellectual property rights and national security has largely focused on the defense role of those rights, as tools for responding to acts of foreign infringement. But intellectual property, and patents in particular, also play an arguably more important offense role. Foreign competitor nations can obtain and assert U.S. patents against U.S. firms and creators. Use of patents as an offense strategy can be strategically coordinated to stymie domestic innovation and technological progress. This Essay considers current and possible future practices of patent exploitation in this offense setting, with a particular focus on China given the nature …

Persistent Surveillance, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Persistent surveillance technologies grant police vast new investigative capabilities. The technologies both monitor targeted areas and generate databases of searchable information about people, places, and patterns that can be connected and accessed for criminal prosecutions.

In the face of this growing police surveillance, courts have struggled to make sense of a fragmented Fourth Amendment doctrine. The Supreme Court has offered some clues that “digital may be different” when it comes to surveillance, but lower courts have been left struggling to apply old law to new technologies. Warrantless use of persistent surveillance technologies raises hard questions about when a “search” occurs …

The Exclusionary Rule In The Age Of Blue Data, Andrew Ferguson

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In Herring v. United States, Chief Justice John Roberts reframed the Supreme Court’s understanding of the exclusionary rule: “As laid out in our cases, the exclusionary rule serves to deter deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct, or in some circumstances recurring or systemic negligence.” The open question remains: how can defendants demonstrate sufficient recurring or systemic negligence to warrant exclusion? The Supreme Court has never answered the question, although the absence of systemic or recurring problems has figured prominently in two recent exclusionary rule decisions. Without the ability to document recurring failures, or patterns of police misconduct, courts can dismiss …

Privacy And Security Across Borders, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Three recent initiatives -by the United States, European Union, and Australiaare opening salvos in what will likely be an ongoing and critically important debate about law enforcement access to data, the jurisdictional limits to such access, and the rules that apply. Each of these developments addresses a common set of challenges posed by the increased digitalization of information, the rising power of private companies delimiting access to that information, and the cross-border nature of investigations that involve digital evidence. And each has profound implications for privacy, security, and the possibility of meaningful democratic accountability and control. This Essay analyzes the …

Microsoft Ireland, The Cloud Act, And International Lawmaking 2.0, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

On March 23, President Trump signed the CLOUD Act, 1 thereby mooting one of the most closely watched Supreme Court cases this term: the Microsoft Ireland case. 2 This essay examines these extraordinary and fast-moving developments, explaining how the Act resolves the Supreme Court case and addresses the complicated questions of jurisdiction over data in the cloud. The developments represent a classic case of international lawmaking via domestic regulation, as mediated by major multinational corporations that manage so much of the world's data.

Borders And Bits, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Our personal data is everywhere and anywhere, moving across national borders in ways that defy normal expectations of how things and people travel from Point A to Point B. Yet, whereas data transits the globe without any intrinsic ties to territory, the governments that seek to access or regulate this data operate with territorial-based limits. This Article tackles the inherent tension between how governments and data operate, the jurisdictional conflicts that have emerged, and the power that has been delegated to the multinational corporations that manage our data across borders as a result. It does so through the lens of …

Defamation And Privacy In The Social Media Age: What Would Justice Brennan Think?, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Access To Data Across Borders: The Critical Role For Congress To Play Now, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Carpenter V. United States: Brief Of Scholars Of Criminal Procedure And Privacy As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Amici curiae are forty-two scholars engaged in significant research and/or teaching on criminal procedure and privacy law. This brief addresses issues that are within amici’s particular areas of scholarly expertise. They have a shared interest in clarifying the law of privacy in the digital era, and believe that a review of scholarly literature on the topic is helpful to answering the question in this case. This brief is co-authored by Harry Sandick, Kathrina Szymborski, & Jared Buszin of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.Carpenter v. United States presents an opportunity to reconsider the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. Cell …

Can The Government Deport Immigrants Using Information It Encouraged Them To Provide?, Amanda Frost

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This Essay describes the legal and policy issues raised by any systematic effort to deport unauthorized immigrants based on information the government invited them to provide. Part I briefly surveys some of the major laws, regulations, and programs that encourage unauthorized immigrants to identify themselves. Part II analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the statutory and constitutional arguments that immigrants could raise as a defense against deportations based on self-reported data. Part III explains that even if the government’s systematic use of such data to deport unauthorized immigrants is legal, doing so would be a poor policy choice for any …

Lawn Signs: A Fourth Amendment For Constitutional Curmudgeons, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

What is the constitutional significance of the proverbial "keep off the grass" sign? This question — asked by curmudgeonly neighbors everywhere — has been given new currency in a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court. Indeed, Florida v. Jardines might have bestowed constitutional curmudgeons with significant new Fourth Amendment protections. By expressing expectations regarding — and control over — access to property, "the people" may be able to claim greater Fourth Amendment protections not only for their homes, but also for their persons, papers, and effects. This article launches a constitutionally grounded, but lighthearted campaign of citizen education …

Big Data And Predictive Reasonable Suspicion, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Fourth Amendment requires “reasonable suspicion” to seize a suspect. As a general matter, the suspicion derives from information a police officer observes or knows. It is individualized to a particular person at a particular place. Most reasonable suspicion cases involve police confronting unknown suspects engaged in observable suspicious activities. Essentially, the reasonable suspicion doctrine is based on “small data” – discrete facts involving limited information and little knowledge about the suspect.But what if this small data is replaced by “big data”? What if police can “know” about the suspect through new networked information sources? Or, what if predictive analytics …

The Un-Territoriality Of Data, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Territoriality looms large in our jurisprudence, particularly as it relates to the government’s authority to search and seize. Fourth Amendment rights turn on whether the search or seizure takes place territorially or extraterritorially; the government’s surveillance authorities depend on whether the target is located within the United States or without; and courts’ warrant jurisdiction extends, with limited exceptions, only to the borders’ edge. Yet the rise of electronic data challenges territoriality at its core. Territoriality, after all, depends on the ability to define the relevant “here” and “there,” and it presumes that the “here” and “there” have normative significance. The …

The 'High Crime Area' Question: Requiring Verifiable And Quantifiable Evidence For Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis, Andrew Ferguson, Damien Bernache

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This article proposes a legal framework to analyze the "high crime area" concept in Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion challenges.Under existing Supreme Court precedent, reviewing courts are allowed to consider that an area is a "high crime area" as a factor to evaluate the reasonableness of a Fourth Amendment stop. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000). However, the Supreme Court has never defined a "high crime area" and lower courts have not reached consensus on a definition. There is no agreement on what a "high-crime area" is, whether it has geographic boundaries, whether it changes over time, whether it …

Logos, Links, And Lending: Towards Standardized Privacy And Use Policies For Banking Web Sites, Walter Effross

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

High-Tech Heroes, Virtual Villians, And Jacked-In Justice: Visions Of Law And Lawyers In Cyberpunk Science Fiction, Walter Effross

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Piracy, Privacy, And Privitization: Fictional And Legal Approaches To The Electronic Future Of Cash, Walter Effross

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.