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5th Annual Innovation And Technology Law Conference: Deep Innovation Dives, Steven W. Bender

SITIE Symposiums

Steven W. Bender, Seattle University School of Law Professor and organizer of the SITIE Symposium series, details the history of the SITIE symposiums and the 2022 proceedings. He discusses how this year's symposium builds on themes and issues raised in previous symposiums and looks ahead to the 2023 SITIE symposium.

How The U.S. Can Make Subject Matter Eligibility More Predictable And Free Artificial Intelligence Innovation, Kelley Sheehan

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article will begin by exploring the abilities of current A.I. technology, the effects of current law on innovation in the A.I. industry across different countries, how countries have dealt with the increasing applications in the field, the important applications of A.I., and how more predictable patentability might be achieved based on goals for the U.S. industry and modeling other countries.

A discussion of patent law treatment of A.I. in the U.S., China, and Japan sets the stage for how each country has adapted to attempt to address this growing industry. From there, solutions and suggestions will be made on …

Spotlight Report #6: Proffering Machine-Readable Personal Privacy Research Agreements: Pilot Project Findings For Ieee P7012 Wg, Noreen Y. Whysel, Lisa Levasseur

Publications and Research

What if people had the ability to assert their own legally binding permissions for data collection, use, sharing, and retention by the technologies they use? The IEEE P7012 has been working on an interoperability specification for machine-readable personal privacy terms to support this ability since 2018. The premise behind the work of IEEE P7012 is that people need technology that works on their behalf—i.e. software agents that assert the individual’s permissions and preferences in a machine-readable format.

Thanks to a grant from the IEEE Technical Activities Board Committee on Standards (TAB CoS), we were able to explore the attitudes of …

Rethinking Patents Within The Natural Law, Nicholas A. D'Andrea

Notre Dame Law Review

Though one scholar has directly suggested an implementation of Thomas Aquinas’s natural law concepts to United States patent law, that proposal has not been analyzed in light of modern patent law subject matter eligibility jurisprudence. In Part I of this Note, I trace the origins of natural law and natural rights in patents through English and United States legal history. In Part II, I outline the philosophical principles of natural law and natural rights necessary for understand-ing patent law. In Part III, I highlight the deemphasis of property rights in patent law, including in cases such as Alice and Oil …

Victims As Instruments, Rachel J. Wechsler

Washington Law Review

Crime victims are often instrumentalized within the criminal legal process in furtherance of state prosecutorial interests. This is a particularly salient issue concerning victims of gender-based violence (GBV) because victim testimony is typically considered essential for successful prosecution of these types of crimes. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington, courts require declarants to be available for cross-examination on “testimonial” hearsay evidence. Consequently, criminal legal actors are further incentivized to employ highly coercive practices aimed at securing GBV victims’ participation in the criminal legal process as evidentiary tools. These practices include arresting and incarcerating victims …

Contractual Evolution, Matthew Jennejohn, Julian Nyarko, Eric L. Talley

University of Chicago Law Review

Conventional wisdom portrays contracts as static distillations of parties’ shared intent at some discrete point in time. In reality, however, contract terms evolve in response to their environments, including new laws, legal interpretations, and economic shocks. While several legal scholars have offered stylized accounts of this evolutionary process, we still lack a coherent, general theory that broadly captures the dynamics of real-world contracting practice. This paper advances such a theory, in which the evolution of contract terms is a byproduct of several key features, including efficiency concerns, information, and sequential learning by attorneys who negotiate several deals over time. Each …

Suspect Development Systems: Databasing Marginality And Enforcing Discipline, Rashida Richardson, Amba Kak

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Algorithmic accountability law—focused on the regulation of data-driven systems like artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision-making (ADM) tools—is the subject of lively policy debates, heated advocacy, and mainstream media attention. Concerns have moved beyond data protection and individual due process to encompass a broader range of group-level harms such as discrimination and modes of democratic participation. While a welcome and long overdue shift, the current discourse ignores systems like databases, which are viewed as technically “rudimentary” and often siloed from regulatory scrutiny and public attention. Additionally, burgeoning regulatory proposals like algorithmic impact assessments are not structured to surface important –yet …

Mandatory Financial Disclosures As Total Regulatory Takings, Jay Khurana

The University of Chicago Business Law Review

In the aftermath of the GameStop phenomenon in early 2021, there have been increasing calls for expanded mandatory financial disclosures particularly regarding hedge funds and short selling. Efforts to increase disclosure requirements on hedge funds may implicate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. This comment argues that mandatory disclosure of a firm’s total portfolio—its long, short, and derivative positions—constitutes an uncompensated taking of its trade secrets. This comment explores the application of current takings jurisprudence to trade secrets and financial disclosures. It concludes that the per se rule established in Lucas v. S.C. Coastal Council should apply to public …

A Comparative Analysis Of Statutory Remedies For Wrongful Convictions In The Fifty States, Abigail St. John

Honors Theses

Thousands of individuals have been wrongfully convicted across the United States. When an exoneration occurs, an individual’s conviction is absolved, and their innocence is proved through newly discovered evidence. While it might be impossible to protect from the errors of the criminal justice system, it is in the hands of the state to compensate the wrongly convicted. There is an abundance of research that focuses on reforming the existing wrongful conviction compensation legislation, but there is a lack of scholarly data that explains the motivations behind this compensation. Moreover, few researchers have considered the role of partisanship and political parties …

Victims As Instruments, Rachel J. Wechsler

Faculty Publications

Crime victims are often instrumentalized within the criminal legal process in furtherance of state prosecutorial interests. This is a particularly salient issue concerning victims of gender-based violence (GBV) because victim testimony is typically considered essential for successful prosecution of these types of crimes. Since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington, courts require declarants to be available for cross-examination on "testimonial" hearsay evidence. Consequently, criminal legal actors are further incentivized to employ highly coercive practices aimed at securing GBV victims' participation in the criminal legal process as evidentiary tools. These practices include arresting and incarcerating victims through …

“We Do Not Live Single-Issue Lives”: Bostock V. Clayton County Mainstreaming Title Vii Intersectional Discrimination Claims, Sharon Beck

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law—The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Examining The Physical Restraint Sentencing Enhancement, Drew Curtis

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cost-Effectiveness Comes To America: The Promise And Perils Of Cost-Effective Analysis In Medication Coverage Decisions, Carl Coleman

Georgia State University Law Review

In an effort to control rising drug costs, some health insurers have begun experimenting with methods to link decisions about coverage to the value added by medicines, including through the use of formal cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). Increased interest in subjecting new drugs to rigorous economic analysis is a welcome development, as it offers the potential to minimize wasteful spending on drugs whose high prices are not justified by evidence of additional benefits produced. At the same time, CEA raises significant ethical issues, particularly when payers use it to limit access to drugs deemed to provide insufficient value for money. For …

Clearview Ai, Tiktok, And The Collection Of Facial Images In International Law, Miriam Kohn

Chicago Journal of International Law

Private companies’ collection of facial images is on the rise globally, which has major implications for both economic development and privacy laws. This Comment uses the facial recognition technology company Clearview AI and the video sharing app TikTok as case studies to examine the problems raised by these practices. After summarizing the relevant legal regimes created by the United Nations (U.N.) and the European Union (E.U.), it applies the E.U. privacy regime to TikTok’s most recent Privacy Policy. The Comment concludes by proposing updates to the E.U. and U.N. privacy regimes to more effectively regulate TikTok’s data collection and analogous …

Government Ethics And Sustainable Space Exploration, Adam F. Greenstone

Northern Illinois University Law Review

This Article is about how government ethics supports humanity’s sustained exploration of outer space. Connotations of space sustainability include addressing all bases so that space activity develops to maximize human benefit. NASA’s ethics practice advances key mission objectives by supporting workforce talent acquisition, talent transfer to other organizations supporting national space objectives, disseminating public information on NASA’s activities, and advancing space commerce development. Following the earlier concurrent development of US government ethics law and human spaceflight, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) has advanced a global anti-corruption framework of which government ethics is part. The significance of government ethics …

Regulating Personal Data Usage In Covid-19 Control Conditions, Mark Findlay, Nydia Remolina

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Concern has been widely expressed about the potential for COVID-19 control technologies and resultant data sharing negatively impacting on civil rights, invading personal privacy, undermining citizen dignity through expansive data matching and ultimately providing opportunities for data use well beyond the brief of virus mitigation. This chapter offers suggestions regarding effective and inclusive regulatory responses when faced with extended surveillance, tracking/tracing, public/private provider data sharing and any breakdown in personal data firewalls, or otherwise conventional aggregated data deviations and distortion. In doing so, the chapter explores personal data usage in the context of COVID-19 as a regulatory enterprise. It addresses …

The Reasonableness Standard Of Compliance In The Singapore Personal Data Protection Act, Warren B. Chik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The “reasonableness test” establishes the threshold of compliance and accountability under the Singapore Personal Data Protection Act. This “open-ended” test is flexible enough to take into account and react to changes in the scope and uses of personal data to maintain an equilibrium between the interest of individuals in the protection of their personal information on the one hand and the needs of organisations for access to, and the use of, such data on the other. This article seeks to provide a better understanding of how the test works by comparing it to the objective and function of the fair …

The Plaintiff's Plight: Altering Alaska's Rule 82 To Better Compensate Plaintiffs, Matthew Naiman

Alaska Law Review

Alaska is unique among the fifty states in its use of a version of the English rule of attorneys' fees in civil cases. Alaska Rule of Civil Procedure 82, in combination with several other rules, effectuates a fee shift such that the losing party pays a portion of the winning party's attorneys' fees. Rule 82 has two fee schedules: one for monetary judgments and one for non-monetary judgments. The monetary judgment fee awards are based in part on the amount of the judgment, while the non-monetary judgment fee awards are based on the victorious party's actual, reasonable attorneys' fees. This …

Where Is The Author: The Copyright Protection For Ai-Generated Works, Chieh Huang

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The two groups of the human-or-machine questions, whether AI-generated works are copyrightable and whether AI-generated works have human authors, are revisiting the current copyright law with the emergence of AI-generated works. These revisiting questions reveal that the current authorship requirement fails to provide a clear and operable standard on evaluating a human contributor’s intellectual labor for creative output. Such a defect of the current authorship requirement has to be fixed to respond to the technological change of artificial intelligence and the burgeoning prevalence of AI- or advanced computer program-generated works.

This dissertation’s main goal is to fix the flaw …

Law In, Law Out: Legalistic Filter Bubbles And The Algorithmic Prevention Of Nonconsensual Pornography, Daniel Maggen

Cardozo Law Review

In 2019, Facebook announced that it had begun using machine-learning algorithms to preemptively screen uploads for nonconsensual pornography. Although the use of screening algorithms has become commonplace, this seemingly minor move from reactive to preemptive legal analysis–based prevention—this Article argues—is part of a groundbreaking shift in the meaning and effect of algorithmic screening, with potentially far-reaching implications for legal discourse and development.

To flush out the meaning of this shift, the Article draws on the filter bubble theory. Thus far, the phenomenon of filter bubbles has been synonymous with personalized filtering and the social polarization and radicalization it is prone …

Redefining Risk: Judicially Heightened Risk Standards And Hiv-Specific Criminal Laws, Bryan Olert

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gauging The Acceptance Of Contact Tracing Technology: An Empirical Study Of Singapore Residents’ Concerns With Sharing Their Information And Willingness To Trust, Ee-Ing Ong, Wee Ling Loo

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments began implementing various forms of contact tracing technology. Singapore’s implementation of its contact tracing technology, TraceTogether, however, was met with significant concern by its population, with regard to privacy and data security. This concern did not fit with the general perception that Singaporeans have a high level of trust in its government. We explore this disconnect, using responses to our survey (conducted pre-COVID-19) in which we asked participants about their level of concern with the government and business collecting certain categories of personal data. The results show that respondents had less concern with …

“You Keep Using That Word”: Why Privacy Doesn’T Mean What Lawyers Think, Joshua A.T. Fairfeld

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article explores how the need to define privacy has impeded our ability to protect it in law. The meaning of “privacy” is notoriously hard to pin down. This article contends that the problem is not with the word “privacy,” but with the act of trying to pin it down. The problem lies with the act of definition itself and is particularly acute when the words in question have deep-seated and longstanding common-language meanings, such as liberty, freedom, dignity, and certainly privacy. If one wishes to determine what words like these actually mean to people, definition is the wrong tool …

Metasoftware: Building Blocks For Legal Technology, Houman Shadab

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

This Article develops a novel concept in information technology called “metasoftware.” It then applies the concept of metasoftware to developing legal technology.

Metasoftware enables users to create the software of their choosing and stands in sharp contrast to traditional, functional. Functional software is the default type of software that is currently produced and includes word processing, email, social networking, enterprise resource management, online marketplaces, and video game software. Metasoftware, by contrast, is not functional. Metasoftware presents the user with a blank slate upon which to build functional software.

I argue that software is metasoftware to that extent that (1) it …

The Operation Successful, But The Patient Died. The Gradual Elimination Of The Central European Peasantry In The Light Of Globalization And Interwar Processes, Janos Fritz

Journal of Global Awareness

In terms of “depeasantisation," it was with the EU accession in 2004 when Central Europe – including Hungary – reached the stage where England had already arrived in the 18th and Germany in the 19th century. The gradual disappearance of the peasantry in the continent is doubtless in connection with the tendencies of globalization, a phenomenon that could not be stopped even by the authoritarian regimes of the interwar period – the time period examined by the dissertation. However, in a latent way, the question had already arisen at the time: is peasantry necessary at all? Nevertheless, as a consequence …

Contextualizing The Impact Of Faculty-Led Short-Term Study Abroad On Students’ Global Competence: Characteristics Of Effective Programs, Colleen Fisher, Laurel Iverson Hitchcock, Ashley Neyer, Stacy C. Moak, Sarah Moore, Scott Marsalis

Journal of Global Awareness

Short-term faculty-led study abroad programs are high-impact pedagogical practices designed to enhance students' global competency. However, there is a gap in our understanding regarding the specific educational components of short-term faculty-led study abroad programs that promote global competency. This systematic review examined nearly two decades of research on such programs (n=86) to assess the educational components associated with increases in students' global competencies using Steinberg's (2017) educational components as a framework. Results indicated that the educational components included in global competency-building education abroad courses varied substantially across programs and global regions. The components most strongly supporting enhanced global competency were …

Notes From The Editor, Jay Nathan

Journal of Global Awareness

No abstract provided.

May The Executive Branch Forgive Student Loan Debt Without Further Congressional Action?, Colin Mark

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

On April 1, 2021, the Biden administration announced that Secretary of Education Michael Cardona will consider whether the President has legal authority to forgive up to $50,000 per debtor in student loan debt without further Congressional action. This paper interrogates the leading arguments for and against the Biden administration’s capacity to forgive this student loan debt strictly using administrative action. This article first surveys the history of federal student loan forgiveness programs in the United States. It then considers whether statutes on the books—in particular, the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the Federal Claims Collection Act of 1966—grant the …

A Case Study Of Canadian Regulation Of Bpa: Insight Into The Science, Jaye Ellis, Arturo Papaluca, Myriam Hamtiaux, Barbara F. Hales, Bernard Robaire

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

No abstract provided.

Infoswarms: Drone Swarms And Information Warfare, Zachary Kallenborn

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Drone swarms, which can be used at sea, on land, in the air, and even in space, are fundamentally information-dependent weapons. No study to date has examined drone swarms in the context of information warfare writ large. This article explores the dependence of these swarms on information and the resultant connections with areas of information warfare—electronic, cyber, space, and psychological—drawing on open-source research and qualitative reasoning. Overall, the article offers insights into how this important emerging technology fits into the broader defense ecosystem and outlines practical approaches to strengthening related information warfare capabilities.