Law Commons^™

The Missing Algorithm: Safeguarding Brady Against The Rise Of Trade Secrecy In Policing, Deborah Won

Michigan Law Review

Trade secrecy, a form of intellectual property protection, serves the important societal function of promoting innovation. But as police departments across the country increasingly rely on proprietary technologies like facial recognition and predictive policing tools, an uneasy tension between due process and trade secrecy has developed: to fulfill Brady’s constitutional promise of a fair trial, defendants must have access to the technologies accusing them, access that trade secrecy inhibits. Thus far, this tension is being resolved too far in favor of the trade secret holder—and at too great an expense to the defendant. The wrong balance has been struck.

This …

Patents-Patent Grant By Private Law-Constitutionality Of Grant After Expiration Of Time Limit, Stanley P. Wagner Jr.

Michigan Law Review

An army officer invented a radar system before World War II but was prevented from patenting it by his superior officers for security reasons. In 1945 his application for a patent was rejected because it was not filed within the time limit embodied in section 102(b) of the Patent Code.1 Congress, in 1950, enacted Private Law 10082 to waive the statutory time limit for the officer's patent application. The act provided that a patent should issue from the 1945 application if the invention .met all the other statutory requirements of the Patent Code. The act provided also that the patent …