Law Commons^™

What Is Cultural Misappropriation And Why Does It Matter? 03-31-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Legal Opacity: Artificial Intelligence’S Sticky Wicket, Charlotte A. Tschider

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Proponents of artificial intelligence (“AI”) transparency have carefully illustrated the many ways in which transparency may be beneficial to prevent safety and unfairness issues, to promote innovation, and to effectively provide recovery or support due process in lawsuits. However, impediments to transparency goals, described as opacity, or the “black-box” nature of AI, present significant issues for promoting these goals.

An undertheorized perspective on opacity is legal opacity, where competitive, and often discretionary legal choices, coupled with regulatory barriers create opacity. Although legal opacity does not specifically affect AI only, the combination of technical opacity in AI systems with legal opacity …

Patents As Signals Of Quality In Crowdfunding, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

Patents and crowdfunding both attempt to foster early stage innova-tions. In theory, patents signal quality and value to attract investment and buyers and ultimately facilitate commercialization. Crowdfunding allows multiple individuals to make small contributions to finance start-up ven-tures. This Article reports on two related studies investigating the interac-tion between these two innovation tools by determining the impact of a crowdfunding campaign’s patent status on the campaign’s success and de-livery. The first study examines 9,184 Kickstarter campaigns in patent-eli-gible categories to determine whether patented or patent-pending labeled projects are more likely to reach their funding goal and in turn achieve actual, …

Clearing Opacity Through Machine Learning, W. Nicholson Price Ii, Arti K. Rai

Articles

Artificial intelligence and machine learning represent powerful tools in many fields, ranging from criminal justice to human biology to climate change. Part of the power of these tools arises from their ability to make predictions and glean useful information about complex real-world systems without the need to understand the workings of those systems.

Intellectual Property Through A Non-Western Lens: Patents In Islamic Law, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

Faculty Scholarship

The intersection of secular, Western intellectual property law and Islamic law is undertheorized in legal scholarship. Yet the nascent and developing non-Western law of one form of intellectual property—patents—in Islamic legal systems is profoundly important for transformational innovation and economic development initiatives of Muslim-majority countries that comprise nearly one-fifth of the world’s population.

Recent scholarship highlights the tensions of intellectual property in Islamic law because religious considerations in an Islamic society do not fully align with Western notions of patents. As Islamic legal systems have begun to embrace patents in recent decades, theories of patents have presented conceptual and theological …