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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Law
Commercializing Cannabis: Confronting The Challenges And Uncertainty Of Trademark And Trade Secret Protection For Cannabis-Related Businesses, John Mixon
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
Over the last couple of decades, society has become more accepting of recreational cannabis and an ever-growing number of states have passed pro-cannabis legislation. With this change, the cannabis industry has, to some extent, exploded into a booming enterprise in states that have legalized marijuana. Nonetheless, cannabis' status as a Schedule I banned substance under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 remains unchanged. As a result, businesses in the cannabis industry face the unique challenge of having to toe the line between "legally" operating under state law and violating federal law, which trumps state law. One particular situation in which …
News Reporting On Trump's Covid-19 Treatments: Should Broadcasters Have To Disclose Their Being Potentially Dangerous?, Dr. Joel Timmer
News Reporting On Trump's Covid-19 Treatments: Should Broadcasters Have To Disclose Their Being Potentially Dangerous?, Dr. Joel Timmer
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, President Trump touted a number of treatments that many medical professionals considered dangerous. These treatments include hydroxychloroquine and disinfectants, which if misused could cause a patient’s death. This prompted Free Press to file an emergency petition with the FCC, arguing that broadcasters who report on Trump’s claims about these treatments without highlighting their dangers could be in violation of the Commission’s broadcast hoax rule. Free Press also requested the FCC require that broadcasters include disclaimers when reporting on such claims. This article examines whether the broadcast hoax rule has been …
Super-Statutory Contracting, Kristelia A. García
Super-Statutory Contracting, Kristelia A. García
Washington Law Review
The conventional wisdom is that property rules induce more—and more efficient—contracting, and that when faced with rigid property rules, intellectual property owners will contract into more flexible liability rules. A series of recent, private copyright deals show some intellectual property owners doing just the opposite: faced with statutory liability rules, they are contracting for more protection than that dictated by law, something this Article calls “super-statutory contracting”—either by opting for a stronger, more tailored liability rule, or by contracting into property rule protection. Through a series of deal analyses, this Article explores this counterintuitive phenomenon, and updates seminal thinking on …
Unregistered Patents, Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton, Emily Michiko Morris
Unregistered Patents, Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton, Emily Michiko Morris
Washington Law Review
Although all should be treated equally under the law, patent law has long been known to favor some less than others. Patentable technology is highly heterogeneous, covering everything from minute improvements in electronics to pioneering new artificial organs, but patent protection itself is purely a one-size-fits-all system. Patents thus overreward some while underrewarding others. On the one hand, patents overreward low-investment, low-value inventions by granting them the same twenty-year term of protection as those that required much higher investments and yield much higher social value. The resulting glut of low-quality patents has contributed greatly to the “patent crisis” of opportunistic …
Distorted Drug Patents, Erika Lietzan, Kristina M.L. Acri Née Lybecker
Distorted Drug Patents, Erika Lietzan, Kristina M.L. Acri Née Lybecker
Washington Law Review
Drug patents are distorted. Unlike most other inventors, drug inventors must complete years of testing to the government’s specifications and seek government approval to commercialize their inventions. All the while, the patent term runs. When a drug inventor finally launches a medicine that embodies the invention, only a fraction of the patent life remains. And yet, conventional wisdom holds—and empirical studies show—that patent life is essential to innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps more so than any other inventive industry. Congress tried to address this in 1984, authorizing the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to “restore” a portion of the …
Harlem Shake Meets The Chevron Two Step: Net Neutrality Following Mozilla V. Fcc, Christopher R. Terry, Scott Memmel
Harlem Shake Meets The Chevron Two Step: Net Neutrality Following Mozilla V. Fcc, Christopher R. Terry, Scott Memmel
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
In October 2019, the D.C. Circuit handed down its much-anticipated decision in Mozilla v. FCC, relying heavily on Chevron Deference and the Supreme Court’s 2005 Brand X decision. The per curiam opinion upheld large portions of the FCC’s 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order, but also undermined the FCC’s preemption of state law while also remanding issues related to public safety, pole attachments, and the Lifeline Program to the agency, assuring that the legal and policy battles over net neutrality will continue. This Article traces the history of the FCC’s efforts on net neutrality as it has moved in and out …
Defective Patent Deference, Tejas N. Narechania
Defective Patent Deference, Tejas N. Narechania
Washington Law Review
The Supreme Court’s implicit deference to the Office of the Solicitor General in patent cases is well-documented: What the Solicitor General requests, the Solicitor General typically receives. But we know far less about how the Solicitor General arrives at these preferred policy positions, or why the Solicitor General comes to advocate for some outcomes over others. This is problematic. In practically every other corner of the administrative state, an agency earns substantial deference to its views only where robust procedural protections attend to the policymaking process, where the agency’s outcome reflects its substantive expertise, and where the agency may, through …
U.S.-U.K. Executive Agreement: Case Study Of Incidental Collection Of Data Under The Cloud Act, Eddie B. Kim
U.S.-U.K. Executive Agreement: Case Study Of Incidental Collection Of Data Under The Cloud Act, Eddie B. Kim
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
In March 2018, Congress passed the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, also known as the CLOUD Act, in order to expedite the process of cross-border data transfers for the purposes of criminal investigations. The U.S. government entered into its first Executive Agreement, the main tool to achieve the goals of the statute, with the United Kingdom in October 2019. While the CLOUD Act requires the U.S. Attorney General to consider whether the foreign government counterpart has a certain level of robust data privacy laws, the relevant laws of the United Kingdom have generally been questioned numerous times for …
Public Performance? How Let's Plays And Livestreams May Be Escaping The Reach Of Traditional Copyright Law, Brianna K. Loder
Public Performance? How Let's Plays And Livestreams May Be Escaping The Reach Of Traditional Copyright Law, Brianna K. Loder
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
Let’s Plays and livestreams are popular online videos of videogames being played. The Copyright Act protects videogames as audiovisual works, and therefore provides videogames with the exclusive right of public performance. The Supreme Court issued a ruling in ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. which clarified that performances in an online setting can be public even if the individuals receiving the content are doing so privately. However, the Court’s holding did not provide guidance on who is a performer, and therefore is liable for the infringing conduct, beyond the specific context by which Aereo transmitted content to its subscribers. Let’s Plays …
Pseudo-Gambling And Whaling: How Loot Boxes Pray On Vulnerable Populations And How To Curtail Future Predatory Behavior, Alexander Mann
Pseudo-Gambling And Whaling: How Loot Boxes Pray On Vulnerable Populations And How To Curtail Future Predatory Behavior, Alexander Mann
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
The video game industry has blossomed from a niche hobby into a mainstream cultural industry, outpacing global box office sales in annual revenue. Yet the price of a video game has barely increased since the industry’s inception, and the current standard price point of sixty dollars has survived for over a decade. Competitive market forces drive companies to invest ever more time and money into creating increasingly complex software in order to remain on the cutting edge of graphics and design, while simultaneously increasing revenue. Thus, video game developers and publishers have developed a multitude of alternative money- making services …