Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Law In An Era Of 'Smart' Technology, Susan W. Brenner

School of Law Faculty Publications

Should law be technologically neutral, or should it evolve as human relationships with technology become more advanced?

Susan Brenner analyzes the complex and evolving interactions between law and technology and provides a thorough and detailed account of the law in technology at the beginning of the 21st century. Brenner draws upon recent technological advances, evaluating how developing technologies may alter how humans interact with each other and with their environment. She analyzes the development of technology as shifting from one of "use" to one of "interaction," and argues that this interchange needs us to reconceptualize our approach to legal rules, …

Statistics In The Jury Box: How Jurors Respond To Mitochondrial Dna Match Probabilities, David H. Kaye, Valerie P. Hans, B. Michael Dann, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA …

Advertising In The Garden Of Eden, Mark Bartholomew

Buffalo Law Review

Millions of people each day log on to participate in "virtual worlds" where they can acquire virtual property, inhabit virtual spaces, and form lasting relationships with other virtual beings. Excited over the potential of a world without physical limitations, commentators extoll the numerous benefits of virtual life and its possibilities as a forum for social experiment. A real threat to this potential Eden exists, however, in the form of advertisers rushing in to sell their wares. Three functional components are present in all advertising - information, persuasion, and personal expression. When these three components are mapped onto the contours of …

Tradable Patent Rights, Ian Ayres, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

Patent thickets may inefficiently retard cumulative innovation. This paper explores two alternative mechanisms that may be used to weed out patent thickets. Both mechanisms are intended to reduce the number of patents in our society. The first mechanism we discuss is price based regulation of patents through a system of increasing renewal fees. The second and more innovative mechanism is quantity based regulation through the establishment of a system of Tradable Patent Rights. The formalization of tradable patent rights would essentially create a secondary market for patent permits in which patent protection will be bought and sold.

Operation Restoration: How Can Patent Holders Protect Themselves From Medimmune?, Stephanie Chu

Duke Law & Technology Review

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in MedImmune v. Genentech shifts the balance of power in license agreements from patent holders to their licensees. This iBrief outlines the potential implications of the new rules on all stages of patent prosecution and protection. Further, it evaluates remedial contract provisions patent holders may include in future license agreements and how these provisions may mitigate the decision’s effects on preexisting commercial relationships.

Encouraging Corporate Innovation For Our Homeland During The Best Of Times For The Worst Of Times: Extending Safety Act Protections To Natural Disasters’, Ava A. Harter

Duke Law & Technology Review

This article first analyzes the innovative tort reform of the SAFETY Act and then argues for expansion of SAFETY Act type risk protection to natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. The SAFETY Act was drafted to stimulate the development and deployment of technologies that combat terrorism by providing liability protection. Applying the same type of legislation to natural disasters will provide a commensurate benefit of encouraging preparedness and development of technologies that could mitigate harms resulting from natural disasters. The Department of Homeland Security voiced a desire to increase the use of the SAFETY Act by private industry. …

Japanese Prefectural Scapegoats In The Constitutional Landscape: Protecting Children From Violent Video Games In The Name Of Public Welfare, Susan Minamizono

San Diego International Law Journal

Part I of this comment will examine the history and application of freedom of expression in Japanese case law and the evolution of the public welfare concept and its circumscribing effect on individual freedoms. Part II will explore the recent local regulatory efforts and the historical underpinnings for these laws that place restrictions on materials to children. Part III will compare the Japanese legislative endeavors with their American counterparts and highlight the reasons why United States laws will continue to be struck down by courts. Part IV will analyze the response of the video game industry to the onslaught of …

Net Neutrality: An International Policy For The United States, Frederick W. Pfister

San Diego International Law Journal

Consider this scenario: Alex and John still are avid video game players and play hours a day, each connecting from the same town through different ISPs. However, since it is a peak Internet traffic time, it may be difficult for them to play. While Alex has the "Diamond" package from his ISP that ensures he has guaranteed high-bandwidth connection, John's ISP does not offer anything other than regular residential service. John must compete with everyone else in his local area for bandwidth, including a few who constantly watch high-definition video-on-demand and subsequently constrain bandwidth for other users. Would it not …

Genes As Tags: The Tax Implications Of Widely Available Genetic Information, Kyle D. Logue, Joel B. Slemrod

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This paper examines how progress in genetics' specifically, the proliferation of knowledge about the human genome' may influence the feasibility and desirability of a tax that is based on individual human endowments or ability. The paper explores various forms that such a genetic endowment tax-and-transfer regime might take and identifies some of the benefits and costs of such a regime. The authors take no position on whether a genetic endowment tax would be desirable or not. However, one contribution of the paper is to observe that current law in the U.S., which restricts the use of genetic information by insurers …

Virtual Copyright: The Applicability And Ownership Of Copyright In Second Life, Bryan M. Carson

DLPS Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Instrumentalização Da Pessoa Humana Em Face Da Biotecnologia, Carolina Altoé Velasco, Manoel Messias Peixinho, Edmir José Menezes Cruz

Carolina Altoé Velasco

As intensas e rápidas transformações no modo de vida da humanidade através das inovações científico-tecnológicas produzem novas situações e relações não previstas diretamente no ordenamento jurídico. Surge a necessidade do aplicador do Direito buscar adequação normativa fundada em regras e princípios que promovam a dignidade humana. Razão do presente é abordar uma temática reflexiva sobre os direitos fundamentais, destacando o singular, inalienável e intransferível valor da pessoa humana. A percepção da dignidade da pessoa humana como valor-fonte aponta para a responsabilidade ética e profissional capaz de produzir e avaliar em sua ação laborativa a essência do bem, do certo, do …

A Budding Theory Of Willful Patent Infringement: Orange Books, Colored Pills, And Greener Verdicts, Christopher A. Harkins

Duke Law & Technology Review

The rules of engagement in the brand-name versus generic-drug war are rapidly changing. Brand-name manufacturers face increasing competition from Canadian manufacturers of generic drugs, online drug companies, and Wal-Mart® Super Centers deciding to cash in by turning a piece of the generic prescription drug business into a huge marketing campaign with offerings of generic drugs for four dollar prescriptions. Other discount drug providers are likely to follow suit in hopes of boosting customer traffic and sales of their generic drugs. Now, more than ever before, attorneys representing owners of pharmaceutical patents need to be creative with their damages theories to …

Measuring The Next 30 Years, Beth Locker, Andrew Barclay

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The last thirty years have seen many changes in the field of child protection, as child welfare law and policy have been undergoing nearly constant change. Those changes, however, have rarely been supported by data or scientific research; rather, they seem to have been largely driven by individual perception of events and gut instincts resulting in what has become essentially a folklore-based system. By focusing on data and scientific research, we hope for better outcomes, but short of that, we at least hope to know whether, and why, outcomes change. The move towards data collection and analysis has begun, but …

Uk Car-Flipping: The Vat Fraud Market-Place And Certified Solutions, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC) fraud and its offspring carousel fraud and contra trading fraud are siphoning huge amounts of VAT revenue from the UK Treasury. This fraud is not a function of the goods involved. It is a function of the market-place. Recently another type of market-place dependent VAT fraud has taken hold in the UK - car-flipping.

In some instances the market-place where these frauds festers is a pre-existing or natural market-place, one that grows out of legitimate commercial practices. Fraudsters enter this market-place (so the argument goes) and take advantage of legitimate businesses who unwittingly get caught up …

Clarifying The Debate Over Therapeutic Forgetting, Adam J. Kolber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Is Open Source Software The New Lex Mercatoria?, Fabrizio Marrella, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Early Internet scholars proclaimed that the transnational nature of the Internet rendered it inherently unregulable by conventional governments. Instead, the Internet would be governed by customs and practices established by the end user community in a manner reminiscent of the lex mercatoria, which spontaneously emerged during medieval times to resolve international trade disputes independently and autonomously from national law. Subsequent events have revealed these claims to have been overly optimistic, as national governments have evinced both the inclination and the ability to exert influence, if not outright control, over the physical infrastructure, the domain name system, and the content flowing …

What Can Antitrust Contribute To The Network Neutrality Debate?, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the course of the last year, policymakers have begun to consider whether antitrust can play a constructive role in the network neutrality debate. A review of both the theory and the practice of antitrust suggests that it does have something to contribute. As an initial matter, antitrust underscores that standardization and interoperability are not always beneficial and provides a framework for determining the optimal level of standardization. In addition, the economic literature and legal doctrine on vertical exclusion reveal how compelling network neutrality could reduce static efficiency and show how mandating network neutrality could impair dynamic efficiency by deterring …

Electronic Records As Documentary Evidence, Ken Chasse

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The new electronic record provisions that are now part of almost all of the Evidence Acts in Canada are as important as any statutory law or common law concerning the use of records as evidence. They bring six important improvements to the evidentiary law of business records. It is argued, however, that their most serious defects are that they: (1) perpetuate the best evidence rule — a rule rendered redundant by electronic records and information management (RIM); (2) do not deal with hearsay issues; (3) do not cure the defects of the business record provisions in regard to electronic records; …

The Adverse Economic Effects Of Spectrum Set-Asides, Robert W. Crandall, Allan T. Ingrahm

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In February 2007, Industry Canada released a consultation that outlined a proposed auction design for spectrum Ifor Advanced Wireless Services. As part of its consultation, Industry Canada contemplated a spectrum set-aside in the AWS auction to facilitate the entry of a new wireless service provider in Canada; however, it noted that a potential drawback of a spectrum set-aside is that it can induce uneconomic entry into the market. In this paper, we show that a set-aside for AWS spectrum in Canada is more likely to result in uneconomic entry than in a viable domestic entrant into the Canadian wireless industry. …

You Must Remember This: The Copyright Conundrum Of "Translation Memory" Databases, Francie Gow

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Translation memory databases (compilations of texts linked with their translations) can be valuable resources in the process of translating subsequent texts. This article explores the circumstances under which such compilations might be considered sufficiently original to attract copyright protection that is independent of any copyright already subsisting in the underlying translations and source texts. Various characteristics of the tools and the translation industry in general make the analysis highly fact-specific; whether particular translation memory databases attract protection, and, if so, who can claim to be their ‘‘authors’’, must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Any protection that is granted may …

Network Neutrality: Justifiable Discrimination, Unjustifiable Discrimination, And The Bright Line Between Them, Noel Semple

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper proposes a bright line test to guide the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (‘‘CRTC’’) in regulating ‘‘network neutrality’’. When Internet service providers seek to discriminate between uses and users in administering their networks, the CRTC should ask whether the proposed discrimination is a reasonable effort to make the price paid by each user commensurate to the demands which his or her use places on the network. Discrimination which meets this description should be tolerated if not actively encouraged, because it encourages the economically efficient allocation of scarce bandwidth. All other forms of ISP discrimination — including discrimination based …

Science For The Environment: Need For Reconsidering Statistical Methodologies, Elisa Vecchione

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This paper is part of a larger effort to analyze the United States vs. European Union dispute on biotechnology products before the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body (DSB).

Starting from May 2003, United States, Canada and Argentina requested consultations with the European Communities (hereinafter EC) regarding measures taken by the EC and its member States affecting the marketing of biotech products. According to United States, Canada and Argentina, the measures at issue were inconsistent with certain EC’s obligations under the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement, the GATT 1994, the Agriculture Agreement and the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) …

La Cesión De Derechos En El Código Civil Peruano, Edward Ivan Cueva

Edward Ivan Cueva

La Cesión de Derechos en el Código Civil Peruano

One Nation, Under … The Watchmaker?: Intelligent Design And The Establishment Clause, Nicholas A. Shuneman

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Electronic Government And Digital Inclusion: Examples From India, Subhajit Basu

Subhajit Basu

This presentation has two parts: In the first part I look into Development, effect of technology on development, obviously technology provides opportunity to have choices but Can Technology (here ICT) influence development? Digital inclusion is a concept about the disparities in terms of citizens’ participation in the Information Society. This participation may be conceptualised in the first instance as ICT access, levels of use and use patterns. On one hand we have technology which promises of New Dawn for the developing countries, on the other hand only access to technology will not provide development for poor millions of a developing …

Maintaining Competition In Copying: Narrowing The Scope Of Gene Patents, Oskar Liivak

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In supporting gene patents, the patent office, the courts and other supporters have assumed that gene discoveries are identical to traditional inventions and therefore the patent system should treat them as identical. In other words, they have assumed that the relatively broad claims that are used for traditional inventions are also appropriate for encouraging gene discovery. This article examines this assumption and finds that gene discoveries are critically different from traditional inventions and concludes that the patent system cannot treat them as identical.

As a doctrinal matter, this article applies the generally overlooked constitutional requirements of inventorship and originality and …

This Town Ain’T Big Enough For The Both Of Us—Or Is It? Reflections On Copyright, The First Amendment And Google’S Use Of Others’ Content, David Kohler

Duke Law & Technology Review

Using a variety of technological innovations, Google became a multi-billion dollar content-delivery business without owning or licensing much of the content that it uses. Google’s principal justification for why this strategy does not contravene the intellectual property rights of the copyright owners is the doctrine of fair use. However, over the last several years, some copyright owners began to push back and challenge Google’s strategy. Much of this litigation presents the courts with something of a conundrum. On the one hand, it is beyond dispute that Google’s services have great social utility. By organizing and making accessible an enormous volume …

Slides: Forest And Rangeland Planning, Nepa Analysis And Decisions, Glenn Casamassa

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

Presenter: Glenn Casamassa, Forest Supervisor, Arapahoe-Roosevelt National Forest

17 slides

Slides: Nepa And Public Participation In Grazing Management On Federal Public Lands: The 40-Year Struggle, Joe Feller

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

Presenter: Joe Feller, College of Law, Arizona State University

22 slides

Slides: Forests And Grasslands, Federico Cheever

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

Presenter: Professor Federico Cheever, University of Denver Sturm College of Law

30 slides