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Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Science and Technology Law

Recovering Tech's Humanity, Olivier Sylvain Jan 2019

Recovering Tech's Humanity, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Disruption And Deference, Olivier Sylvain Jan 2015

Disruption And Deference, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

Online video streaming applications enable users to watch over the-air broadcast programs at any time and almost on any device. As such, they challenge the pertinence of traditional video distribution law and the broadcast network system on which it is based. Congress enacted the Transmit Clause of the 1976 Copyright Act to resolve the high-stakes tussle between broadcasters and cable providers. But, today, that provision is ill-suited to resolving whether unauthorized streaming infringes on broadcasters’ copyright to perform works publicly. Its scope is ambiguous enough that judges across the country were notably divided on whether it reaches online video distribution—that …


Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine In The Era Of Total Surveillance, Olivier Sylvain Jan 2014

Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine In The Era Of Total Surveillance, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

Today’s reasonable expectation test and the third-party doctrine have little to nothing to offer by way of privacy protection if users today are at least conflicted about whether transactional noncontent data should be shared with third parties, including law enforcement officials. This uncertainty about how to define public expectation as a descriptive matter has compelled courts to defer to legislatures to find out what public expectation ought to be more as a matter of prudence than doctrine. Courts and others presume that legislatures are far better than courts at defining public expectations about emergent technologies.This Essay argues that the reasonable …


Wireless Localism: Beyond The Shroud Of Objectivity In Federal Spectrum Administration, Olivier Sylvain Jan 2013

Wireless Localism: Beyond The Shroud Of Objectivity In Federal Spectrum Administration, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

Recent innovations in mobile wireless technology have instigated a debate between two camps of legal scholars about how policymakers should structure federal administration of the electromagnetic spectrum. The first argues that the Federal Communications Commission should define spectrum use rights more clearly and give spectrum licensees near fee-simple property rights in frequencies that they can use and sell in secondary markets as they wish. The second camp argues that, rather than award exclusive licenses to the highest bidder, the FCC ought to open much if not most of the spectrum to unlicensed use by smartphones and tablets equipped with the …


Contractual Expansion Of The Scope Of Patent Infringement Through Field-Of-Use Licensing, Mark R. Patterson Jan 2007

Contractual Expansion Of The Scope Of Patent Infringement Through Field-Of-Use Licensing, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Patentees sometimes license their inventions through field-of-use licenses, which permit licensees to use the inventions, but only in specified ways. Field-of-use licensing is often procompetitive, because the ability to provide different licensing terms for different users can encourage broader licensing of inventions. But in recent United States cases, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and lower courts have upheld field-of-use licenses prohibiting activities that licensees would otherwise have been permitted by patent law, such as the repair and resale of patented products. The recent cases rely on the Federal Circuit's decision in Mallinckrodt, Inc. v. Medipart, Inc., where the court …


A Mind To Blame: New Views On Involuntary Acts, Deborah W. Denno Jan 2003

A Mind To Blame: New Views On Involuntary Acts, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the legal implications linked to recent scientific research on human consciousness. The article contends that groundbreaking revelations about consciousness expose the frailties of the criminal law's traditional dual dichotomies of conscious versus unconscious thought processes and voluntary versus involuntary acts. These binary doctrines have no valid scientific foundation and clash with other key criminal law defenses, primarily insanity. As a result, courts may adjudicate like individuals very differently based upon their (often unclear) understanding of these doctrines and the science that underlies them. This article proposes a compromise approach by recommending that the criminal law's concept of …


Inventions, Industry Standards, And Intellectual Property, Mark R. Patterson Jan 2002

Inventions, Industry Standards, And Intellectual Property, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

When an industry standard incorporates a patented invention, the demand for products that comply with the standard has two components. Some of the demand may be for the inherent technical advantages of the invention; the patentee is generally entitled to revenues attributable to this demand. But some of the demand is for the benefits of standardization, such as interoperability, and the patentee is not entitled to revenues attributable to this demand. From this point, the article draws two conclusions. First, the amounts to which a patentee is entitled, either in litigation or in licensing negotiations, should be calculated by determining …


Conflicts Of Interest In Scientific Expert Testimony, Mark R. Patterson Jan 1998

Conflicts Of Interest In Scientific Expert Testimony, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Conflicts of interest have significant implications for the reliability of scientific expert testimony. However, the courts' treatment of conflicts is not always in accord either with the treatment of conflicts in scientific practice or with the particular problems that scientists' conflicts present in court. In response, this Article proposes two basic changes in the treatment of scientific expert testimony. First, courts should strive to separate issues of bias from issues of scientific validity-the two sets of issues are now conflated at times. Second, courts should pay more attention to biases of scientists who perform the research underlying expert testimony, whereas …