Digital Commons Network^™

Patents In Paradise: The Evolution Of Patent Law In The Cayman Islands, Andrew W. Torrance, Andrew P. Morriss, Lisa C. Friedman

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

This study examines the Cayman Islands’ unique position in the global intellectual property (IP) landscape, contrasting its success as an exporter of financial and legal services with the inherently domestic nature of patent protection. We hypothesize that due to this limitation, the Cayman Islands functions as a strategic, cost-effective jurisdiction for augmenting patent protection initially obtained elsewhere. Our research provides the first comprehensive analysis of Caymanian patents, and through a quantitative examination of patent family data—including filing trends, economic valuation, geographic distribution, and assignee profiles—we find strong empirical evidence to support this thesis.
Our findings reveal a disproportionate presence of …

Toward A Transformative Fair Use Standard After Warhol, Sangwook Park

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith narrowed the transformative fair use inquiry but left unresolved where derivative adaptation ends and genuine transformation begins. This article proposes that the Purpose-Expression Shift (PES) Framework can supply that missing line, a dual-pronged standard rooted in § 107(1) that asks (1) whether the secondary work serves a purpose meaningfully different from the original and (2) whether its expressive alterations are tailored to realize that new purpose. Mapping two decades of case law onto a four-quadrant matrix, this article shows how the PES Framework can predict outcomes under first factor …

The Transatlantic Clinical Trial Transparency Gap, Gabriela Lenarczyk

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

Clinical trial data occupy a contested space between private commercial assets and public goods. While the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has historically shielded these data through expansive trade-secret interpretations, the European Union (EU) has adopted a more open disclosure regime. This Article compares the two regimes and traces how the EU’s two-decade journey toward transparency has become a key reference for researchers and advocates of open data-sharing.

Focusing on EU practices—targeted redactions, time-bound access, granular disclosure guidelines—the paper shows that U.S. objections to broader transparency often rest on overstated concerns about competitive harm. A Filspari (sparsentan) case …

The Free Content Illusion, Jonathan M. Barnett

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

Conventional scholarly wisdom tends to discount the importance of copyright as a tool for delivering remuneration to the artists that sustain the digital creative ecosystem or as an enabling mechanism that facilitates the licensing, distribution, and financing transactions that constitute the economic infrastructure of the media and entertainment industries. This position runs counter to the evolution of digital content markets, which have experienced renewed investment and growth concurrently with the development of technological tools that have enabled content owners to correct for the “copyright deficit,” regulate access, and extract payment from platforms and users. This result conforms to standard economic …

Table Of Contents, Jared M. Brown

Georgia Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Skrmetti And The Problem Of Incidental Intent, Martin J. Katz

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The modern Supreme Court has defined “discriminatory intent” as a strict-liability concept. It does not matter why the government sorts people by a protected characteristic, such as race or sex; it matters only that the government does sort people by such a characteristic. This principle is the key holding of affirmative-action cases, such as Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. Yet, in the recent case United States v. Skrmetti, the Court seemed to focus not on the question of whether the government sorted people by sex (it did), but on the question …

Vol. 70, No. 4 (February 2, 2026)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Framing Harmonization: Illusion And Reality In The Riyadh Design Law Treaty, Christine Farley, Margo Bagley

Editorial Contributions

Introduction:

From the outside, the Riyadh Design Law Treaty (RDLT) has long appeared as a modest administrative measure. Negotiated in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Trademarks (SCT), it has repeatedly been characterized as a “procedural treaty” concerned with filing formalities rather than substantive reform. The contrast with the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (GRATK Treaty) is striking. Both treaties were adopted in 2024 after 20+ years of negotiation. But only the GRATK Treaty attracted sustained scholarly and civil society engagement; the RDLT attracted almost none.

Debt’S Dominion: A New Epilogue, David Skeel

BYU Law Review

This Essay, written for the “Who Governs Debt’s Dominion” symposium, looks back on Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the book’s publication nears. The Essay begins, in Part I, by briefly describing how Debt’s Dominion came about. Part II identifies and seeks to explain a striking decline in optimism about American bankruptcy law since Debt’s Dominion was first published. Part III explores a few of the major recent developments in consumer bankruptcy, small business bankruptcy, and large-scale corporate reorganization that I would have analyzed in the book if it were written today. …

Green Rules, Fragmented Fields: Member-State Approaches To Sustainability In Eu Competition Law, Niccolò Galli, Armando Santoni

Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies

This article provides a comparative, normative-evaluative examination of how sustainability is being incorporated into European competition law. Combining doctrinal legal analysis with economic reasoning, it clarifies competing definitions of sustainability, maps the contest between the consumer-welfare paradigm and sustainability proponents, and evaluates the legal and institutional implications of the Commission’s 2023 Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines. Drawing on national initiatives across Member States plus the UK, the study highlights contrasting instruments, from Austria’s statutory environmental exemption to the Dutch soft-law safe harbour and Greece’s experimental sustainability sandbox, and shows how these divergent approaches produce fragmentation and legal uncertainty for cross-border cooperative initiatives. …

Mmu: 02/02/26-02/08/26, Student Bar Association

Monday Morning Update

This Week @ NDLS

Mass Times

Commons Daily Menu

Saint of the Week

General Announcements

Law School News: Roger Williams University Marks Fred Korematsu Day With Reflection On Rights And Responsibility 02-02-2026, Kelly Brinza, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 02.02.26, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• 2026 Galilee Immersion Program: Exposing First-Year Law Students to the Impact of Public Interest Law
• Professor Jeffrey Pojanowski Named Inaugural Sydney Public Law Visiting Fellow

Student News

• The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)’s Knowledge Hub for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has published a new issue brief co-produced with the Notre Dame Global Human Rights Clinic. Student researchers and drafters from the Clinic worked closely with Professor Diane Desierto and research associate Faisal Yamil Meneses in contributing to the brief.

Faculty Briefs

• A.J. Bellia
• Michael Addo
• Fr. John Paul Kiimes
• Nicole …

The Comparator Argument In Trans-Healthcare Ban Cases, Craig Konnoth

UC Law Journal

As states have increasingly restricted gender affirming care for minors across the nation (reinforced by a recent Executive Order by President Trump), and though the Supreme Court ruled on one such state ban, a powerful argument has largely been overlooked. This argument emphasizes the fact that transgender minors are not alone in receiving gender affirming care. Cisgender minors also receive such care for precisely the same reasons as transgender minors— unwanted breast tissue development, undesired hair growth, unusual vocal development, and puberty onset. Indeed, cisgender children receive such care at higher numbers than trans children, and many of the medications …

Systemic Jurisdictional Ambiguity, Norman W. Spaulding

UC Law Journal

The purpose of jurisdictional rules is to provide reasonably clear signals about when a court does and does not have power over a case. Judging from the modern Supreme Court’s rules for determining jurisdiction, however, one would think jurisdictional rules need neither be clear nor consistent. From rules for determining standing, federal question jurisdiction, and personal jurisdiction to Erie doctrine and the power of Congress to create non-Article III courts—rules that affect the administration of justice in millions of cases every year—modern jurisdictional rules are notorious for their inconsistency and ambiguity. This level of ambiguity is remarkable given the zeal …

A Case Against Mass Deportation: The Japanese American Internment Camps And Recent Treatment Of Korematsu, Isaac Bloch

UC Law Journal

The large-scale deportation of non-citizens has become a preeminent policy issue. Unfortunately, executive curtailment of immigrant communities’ liberty is not without historical parallels. During World War II, federal officials sent individuals of Japanese descent to internment camps through a series of executive orders and military proclamations. Although attorneys in the Department of Justice believed aspects of these actions were unconstitutional at the time, the administration prevailed at the nation’s highest court. Can recognition of this past wrong aid challenges to contemporary immigration enforcement regimes? How do our courts formally account for the most egregious jurisprudential errors of the past, and …

Caremark Claims Following Disasters: Why Plaintiffs Should Sue The Board When It Causes A Disaster, Eli Mizock

UC Law Journal

Fire disasters have become an inevitability for California residents. After a fire disaster, the public is primarily concerned with compensating the victims. However, securities fraud class actions brought by shareholders of the responsible utilities companies also accompany fire disasters. This Note argues that, instead of securities class actions, derivative claims under the Caremark jurisprudence may better serve corporate litigants following fire disasters. Historically, surviving the initial motion to dismiss under the Caremark standard has been a challenging hurdle for plaintiffs. However, under Marchand v. Barnhill and In re Clovis Oncology Derivative Litigation, “mission critical” risks of life and limb, or …

The Equal Protection Problem: The Right To Vote, Gerrymandering, And Lessons From Canada, Gabriel Renneisen

UC Law Journal

In the wake of Rucho v. Common Cause, partisan gerrymandering remains a nonjusticiable political question. This retreat from judicial oversight leaves a significant gap in the protection of democratic governance. The United States Constitution, as currently interpreted, offers little substantive support for voters’ rights as such. Courts locate the right to vote in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but that Clause protects equal access to voting rights—not meaningful participation, representation, or influence; it requires scrutiny only where legislatures rely on unconstitutional criteria to classify voters. Notably, at the time of this writing, California and Texas are in …

Three (Unfashionable) Words About Rick Marcus, Steve Gensler

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Rick Marcus, Andrew Bradt

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Richard Marcus: An Encomium, Deborah R. Hensler

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

UC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Unlached: The Case Against Laches In Actions Brought In Replevin By Foreign Sovereigns For Objects Of Cultural Heritage, Peyton M. Kendall

William & Mary Law Review

The American judicial system sanctions the theft of objects of immense cultural value from source nations—countries whose modern borders encompass territory previously inhabited by culturally rich civilizations—by allowing the allegedly equitable doctrine of laches to serve as an affirmative defense to actions brought by foreign sovereigns in replevin.

Courts have treated laches as a valid affirmative defense in foreign-sovereign-plaintiff replevin actions, treating the foreign sovereigns no differently than they would a private citizen bringing suit for a piece of artwork. While the value of the artwork may be the same in the two instances—both in terms of cultural and monetary …

We The People: Ending Subminimum Wage Through Alternative Means Where Legislation Has Failed, Heather N. Kainz

Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Constitutional Protection For Religious Liberty Gets Lost In Translation: A Case Study From Washington State, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Protecting religious liberty can present difficult challenges when religious liberty conflicts with laws prohibiting discrimination. Balancing religious liberty and nondiscrimination requires courts to accurately apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s complex First Amendment jurisprudence, including cases that address compelled speech, expressive association, and church autonomy. Amidst all the complexity, protection for religious liberty can get lost in translation. One important venue where protection can get lost in translation is in religious liberty cases decided by state supreme courts. The decisions of state supreme courts are especially significant because they provide the authoritative construction for state statutes and the state constitution. In …

Subsidiarity Municipalism In Action: On Vincent V. Adams, Gregory E. Louis

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Building on the author’s recent article Protecting Commoners’ Goods: Pluralist Coexistence Through the Common Good Constitution’s Subsidiarity Municipalism (PCG), this Essay deconstructs the recent New York appellate opinion in Vincent v. Adams. That case reverses a trial court opinion that PCG criticizes as an example of how current law misunderstands the proper relationship between local government and federal and state authorities. This Essay uses the appellate court decision in Vincent v. Adams to reinforce PCG’s thesis of subsidiarity municipalism, to offer another illustration of subsidiarity municipalism’s progressive potential, and to suggest how subsidiarity municipalism can inform the relationship between …

Vacancies Filled By Voters’ Voices: A Call For Open Special Elections With Ranked Choice Voting In New York, Fordham Law School Rule Of Law Clinic, Dani D'Annunzio, Dawn Edelman, David Zwick

Rule of Law Clinic

New York’s special election system for filling vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives and the State Legislature excludes voters from the candidate selection process. Instead of voters selecting nominees, political party leaders designate their parties’ respective candidates. In this report, the Fordham Law School Rule of Law Clinic recommends reforming this system by implementing open special elections using ranked choice voting. All candidates who meet petition signature requirements, regardless of party affiliation, would compete in a single election. This reform would improve participation, representation, and accountability without sacrificing efficiency.

A ‘Digital Dominion’: Launching The Commonwealth Model Law On Digital Trade, Craig Atkinson

Centre for Digital Law

A legislative text published for the benefit of its 56 member countries, the Commonwealth of Nations officially adopted the Model Law on Digital Trade (MLDT) in September 2025. The Commonwealth MLDT addresses a persistent barrier to digital trade (i.e., all trade that is digitally ordered and/or digitally delivered): the laws of many jurisdictions do not sufficiently recognise the legal requirements of electronic commerce (e-commerce) and continue to emphasise paper-bases for commercial communications and transactions in domestic and cross-border contexts.

Criminal Caselaw Notebook 2026, Hon. Ronald Kessler

Washington State Books

This publication from King County Superior Court judge Ronald Kessler is updated semi-annually and is distributed free of charge. It includes citations to Washington state case law on a variety of criminal law topics.

International Governance Of Ocean Iron Fertilization Research: A Case Study Of The Proposed Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions Field Experiments, Ashwin Murthy, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Ocean iron fertilization (OIF) has been a subject of scientific research since the 1980s. The primary international legal instruments regulating OIF are the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention or LC) and the 1996 Protocol to that Convention (London Protocol or LP). To guide regulation of research activities, under the LC and LP, the Assessment Framework was developed.

To demonstrate how domestic regulators might use the Assessment Framework, this paper explores its application to recently proposed OIF field trials advanced by the Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions (ExOIS) research consortium. …