Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Crashed Software: Assessing Product Liability For Software Defects In Automated Vehicles, Sunghyo Kim

Duke Law & Technology Review

Automated vehicles will not only redefine the role of drivers, but also present new challenges in assessing product liability. In light of the increased risks of software defects in automated vehicles, this Note will review the current legal and regulatory framework related to product liability and assess the challenges in addressing on-board software defects and cybersecurity breaches from both the consumer and manufacturer perspective. While manufacturers are expected to assume more responsibility for accidents as vehicles become fully automated, it can be difficult to determine the scope of liability regarding unexpected software defects. On the other hand, consumers face new ...

State Biotechnology Oversight: The Juncture Of Technology, Law, And Public Policy, Christine C. Vito Ph.D.

Maine Law Review

In a 1980 landmark decision, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that genetically engineered lifeforms such as bacteria were patentable. The significance of this decision to the emerging biotechnology industry—an industry predicated on intellectual property rights—was incalculable. The characteristically research-intensive, capital-intensive biotechnology industry now had the economic incentive to push the technology of genetic engineering to previously unimagined extremes. The genetic engineering and recombinant DNA applications pursued by the biotechnology industry over the past ten years have engendered a spectrum of perplexing inquiries concerning ethical and moral values; agricultural, ecological and environmental matters; global competitiveness and ...

Taking Ai Personally: How The E.U. Must Learn To Balance The Interests Of Personal Data Privacy & Artificial Intelligence, Matthew Humerick

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Taking AI Personally: How the E.U. Must Learn to Balance the Interests of Personal Data Privacy & Artificial Intelligence

The Contract Exception To The Uniform Trade Secrets Act And Its Implications For The Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, Richard F. Dole, Jr.

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

The Contract Exception to the Uniform Trade Secrets Act and Its Implications for the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act

Reforming Regenerative Medicine Regulation, Sarah Duranske

Georgia State University Law Review

Regenerative medicine is defined as the branch of medicine that develops methods to regrow, repair, or replace damaged or diseased cells or tissues. It includes a variety of approaches, such as transplanting cells to promote healing, editing genes in cells to attack cancer, and even building organs from biological materials. Regulating regenerative medicine therapies is no easy task. Finding a balance between competing interests–enabling timely access for needy patients while simultaneously ensuring a positive benefit/risk profile and promoting the development of beneficial innovations–is hard enough at any given point in time. But add in constantly advancing scientific ...

Whose Sperm Is It Anyways In The Wild, Wild West Of The Fertility Industry?, Tatiana E. Posada

Georgia State University Law Review

Imagine a couple that is unable to conceive a child naturally. Luckily, they had the money and resources available to them to conceive a child through assisted reproductive technology (ART), so they decided to start their family through the use of intrauterine insemination. They selected a sperm bank and began the arduous process of selecting a sperm donor who fit the desired traits and characteristics for their child. The sperm bank matched them with an anonymous donor, Donor 9623, and assured the couple that the donor was “a healthy male with an IQ of 160, a bachelor’s of science ...

Suggestions For State Laws On Biosimilar Substitution, Gary M. Fox

Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review

Biologic drugs offer major advancements over small-molecule drugs when it comes to treating serious diseases. Biosimilars, which mimic innovative biologic drugs, have the potential to further revolutionize the practice of medicine. States now have decades of experience regulating the substitution of generic, small-molecule drugs for their brand-name equivalents. But the complexities of biologic drugs and biosimilars force states to confront novel scientific and legal issues. Many states have begun tackling those issues by passing laws that regulate when pharmacists may substitute biosimilars for their corresponding biologic drugs. Other states have yet to do so. This Note surveys five provisions common ...

Exclusion In Digital Markets, Konstantinos Stylianou

Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review

This Article proceeds as follows: a short introduction to exclusion is offered in Part 2 for the purposes of laying down basic assumptions, an analytical framework, and the overall ideological tone of the article. Then Parts 3 to 6 discuss the relevant parameters in assessing when digital exclusion can be anticompetitive. In particular, Parts 3 and 4 look into the competitive conditions in the market and discuss mechanisms by which the supply and demand sides of markets react to exclusionary practices to limit them. Part 5 concerns itself with another condition of anticompetitive exclusion, namely the requirement that the power ...

Tiny Things With A Huge Impact: The International Regulation Of Nanomaterials, Dario Picecchi

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Mounting evidence demonstrates that nanotechnology and nanomaterials impose severe environmental risks. To minimize these risks, the usage and handling of certain nanomaterials could be addressed under existing treaties such as the Rotterdam Convention, the Stockholm Convention, and the Basel Convention. However, even if existing treaties govern the handling of certain nanomaterials, no treaty effectively regulates all the specific challenges that nanomaterials pose to the global environment. Consequently, a completely new regulatory instrument is required. An international organization could take responsibility for developing and promoting such a nanospecific international legal framework. By incorporating the precautionary principle, a technology transfer, research cooperation ...

The Return Of The Plague: Inequitable Conduct After Regeneron V. Merus, Matthew Avery, Matthew Kempf, Amy Liang

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

The Return of the Plague: Inequitable Conduct After Regeneron V. Merus

The Face-Off Between Data Privacy And Discovery: Why U.S. Courts Should Respect Eu Data Privacy Law When Considering The Production Of Protected Information, Samantha Cutler

Boston College Law Review

When foreign parties involved in U.S. litigation are ordered to produce information that is protected by EU data privacy law, they are caught in an unfortunate “Catch-22.” Historically, U.S. courts have pointed to the unlikelihood of sanctions for data privacy law violations to justify these orders. EU data privacy law, however, has recently undergone several shifts in favor of tougher rules and significantly increased sanctions. Additionally, EU regulators are now more vigilant and active in enforcing these laws. These developments, combined with the benefits of international judicial respect and the intrinsic value of privacy, mean that U.S ...

Lost Profits In A Multicomponent World, Bernard Chao

Boston College Law Review

Given our adversarial system, it is not surprising that plaintiffs advance creative damages theories that would help them maximize their recoveries. In patent law, one recurring tactic for patentees is to seek remedies based on the entire infringing product instead of the specific feature covered by the patent. This distinction can significantly inflate remedies because modern multicomponent products contain thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of different features. Thus, entire products are orders of magnitude larger, more complex, and more valuable than individual features.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has sensibly rejected attempts to base patent remedies on entire products ...

Industrial Cyber Vulnerabilities: Lessons From Stuxnet And The Internet Of Things, Lawrence J. Trautman, Peter C. Ormerod

University of Miami Law Review

Cyber breaches continue at an alarming pace with new vulnerability warnings an almost daily occurrence. Discovery of the industrial virus Stuxnet during 2010 introduced a global threat of malware focused toward disruption of industrial control devices. By the year 2020, it is estimated that over 30 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices will exist. The IoT global market spend is estimated to grow from $591.7 billion in 2014 to $1.3 trillion in 2019 with a compound annual growth rate of 17%. The installed base of IoT endpoints will grow from 9.7 billion in 2014 to more than ...

The Court Must Play Its Interpretative Role: Defending The Defend Trade Secrets Act’S Extraterritorial Reach, Jada M. Colon

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

The exact reach of the Defend Trade Secrets Act’s extraterritoriality provision has yet to be interpreted by the courts. If United States securities, trademark, and antitrust law serves as any indication of what is to be expected, the Defend Trade Secrets Act may be subject to an inconsistent array of interpretation. When faced with interpreting the extraterritorial scope of the Defend Trade Secrets Act for the first time, the court must set a strong precedent by enacting a single, uniform effects test that will not falter when applied in different circumstances and by different circuits. Courts interpreting United States ...

Proximate Vs. Geographic Limits On Patent Damages, Stephen Yelderman

IP Theory

The exclusive rights of a U.S. patent are limited in two important ways. First, a patent has a technical scope—only the products and methods set out in the patent’s claims may constitute infringement. Second, a patent has a geographic scope—making, using, or selling the products or methods described in the patent’s claims will only constitute infringement if that activity takes place in the United States. These boundaries are foundational features of the patent system: there can be no liability for U.S. patent infringement without an act that falls within both the technical and geographic ...

Legal Limbo: The Fifth Circuit's Decision In Turner V. Driver Fails To Clarify The Contours Of The Public's First Amendment Right To Record The Police, Stephanie Johnson

Boston College Law Review

On February 16, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in Turner v. Driver, held that the public has a First Amendment right to record the police that is subject only to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. Although Turner established that the public has a First Amendment right to film the police, the decision skirted the question of whether the particular conduct in Turner—video recording police activity and/or video recording the police station—was an activity protected by the First Amendment. This Comment argues that the Fifth Circuit erred in not clarifying the ...

Privacy, Screened Out: Analyzing The Threat To Individual Privacy Rights And Fifth Amendment Protections In State V. Stahl, Jesse Coulon

Boston College Law Review

Courts across the United States have applied Fifth Amendment protections to passcodes, as long as those passcodes are not a foregone conclusion. In order for a court to determine that a passcode is a forgone conclusion, and thus not testimonial in nature, the prosecution must show that they knew the existence, possession, and authenticity of the evidence that would be discovered by the compelled passcode, before the passcode is compelled. The foregone conclusion doctrine was established, and had been used, to balance the need of law enforcement to gather incriminating evidence while still protecting defendants’ Fifth Amendment rights. In 2016 ...

Intellectual Property, Surrogate Licensing, And Precision Medicine, Jacob S. Sherkow, Jorge L. Contreras

IP Theory

The fruits of the biotechnology revolution are beginning to be harvested. Recent regulatory approvals of a variety of advanced therapies—Keytruda (pembrolizumab), Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel), and patisiran—have ushered in an age of “precision medicine” treatments that target patients’ specific genetic, physiological, and environmental profiles rather than generalized diagnoses of disease. Therapies like these may soon be supplemented by gene editing technologies such as CRISPR, which could enable the targeted eradication of deleterious genetic variants to improve human health. But the intellectual property (IP) surrounding precision therapies and their foundational technology remain controversial. Precision therapies ultimately rely—and are roughly congruent ...

Internet-Of-Things Devices, Intellectual Property, Venture Capital, China Manufacturing, And The Art Of A Clean Deal: Who Owns What?, Chris Carr, Dan Harris

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Internet-of-Things Devices, Intellectual Property, Venture Capital, China Manufacturing, and the Art of a Clean Deal: Who Owns What?

Call For Standardization In Patent Claim Drafting, Tao Zhang, Daniel J. Sherwinter, Dov Greenbaum

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Call for Standardization in Patent Claim Drafting