Law Commons^™

Vaccine Clinical Trials And Data Infrastructure, Ana Santos Rutschman

Utah Law Review

We find ourselves at a momentous turn in the history of vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a quasi-global vaccine race that not only compressed vaccine research and development (R&D) timelines, but also paved the way for the administration of a new type of vaccine technology – mRNA vaccines, which work in substantially different ways from the vaccines in use before the pandemic.

While the process of bringing emerging COVID-19 vaccines to market has taken place in an unusually short timeframe, it was largely predicated on the same scientific and regulatory processes that govern the development, approval and deployment of new …

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 …

Repeal The Defend Trade Secret Act: Why Congress Can't Rely On Trade Secret Law To Protect America's Trade Secrets, Steven Miller

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Trade secret theft from foreign and domestic competitors continue to siphon technological advances from United States businesses. This siphoning erodes America's competitive advantage in the global marketplace; however, this note argues that recent Congressional legislation that attempts to strengthen trade secret protection actually harms America's competitive advantage. This note argues for Congress to repeal its trade secret protection, because trade secret law,a s currently applied, fails to deter trade secret theft and fails to protect American business interests domestically or abroad, and yet actually harms domestic innovation.

Secrets, Sovereigns, And States: Analyzing State Government's Liability For Trade Secret Misappropriation, Grant Cole

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Trade secrets are many business's most valuable assets. From Google’s algorithm to Coca-Cola’s secret recipe, trade secrets are becoming increasingly important to businesses and our economy. What if state governments could simply misappropriate these trade secrets without liability? Sadly, this situation is not uncommon. Many state governments have misappropriated trade secrets with virtual impunity. This is because the doctrine of sovereign immunity protects state governments from liability. This leaves businesses that deal with the government without a way to recover for the misappropriation of their trade secrets. This result is especially damaging because once a trade secret is no longer …

The Trade Secrecy Standard For Patent Prior Art, Sharon Sandeen, Camilla A. Hrdy

Faculty Scholarship

A fundamental criterion of patentability is that an invention must be new as compared to the prior art—the corpus of preexisting knowledge and technology already available to the public. If an invention is in the prior art, or rendered obvious by it, it cannot be patented.

The U.S. Patent Act has traditionally envisioned a categorical approach for deciding what counts as prior art. Under this approach, courts are supposed to decide whether a particular disclosure about the invention (a reference) falls within one of the categories listed in Section 102 of the Patent Act, such as “described in a printed …

Race Cartels: How Constructor Collaboration Is Curbing Innovation In Formula 1, Chandler C. Gerard-Reimer

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Formula 1 is in the midst of a copycat scandal: technology has made it possible for teams to reverse engineer clones of competitors’ race cars. This is a less than ideal state of affairs for the championship series, which prides itself on being the pinnacle of motorsport and automotive innovation, thanks in large part to the cars’ rapid rate of technological advancement. In order to address this problem, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Formula 1’s governing body, must increase independent innovation efforts by amending the technical regulations to restrict the extent of presently allowed inter-team collaboration. Worried that the …

Data As The New Oil: A Slippery Slope Of Trade Secret Implications Greased By The California Consumer Privacy Act, Megan Marie Miller

Cybaris®

Following the European model of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the state of California implemented the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on January 1, 2020. The CCPA allows any California consumer to demand to see all of the information that a company has saved on them; consumers can also request a full list of all the third parties that their data is shared with, sold to, and for what commercial purpose. This paper reviews the implications of a new law on the disclosure of trade secrets like client lists and algorithms that manipulate consumers’ data. Ultimately, the issue comes …

Contracting For Algorithmic Accountability, Cary Coglianese, Erik Lampmann

All Faculty Scholarship

As local, state, and federal governments increase their reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) decision-making tools designed and operated by private contractors, so too do public concerns increase over the accountability and transparency of such AI tools. But current calls to respond to these concerns by banning governments from using AI will only deny society the benefits that prudent use of such technology can provide. In this Article, we argue that government agencies should pursue a more nuanced and effective approach to governing the governmental use of AI by structuring their procurement contracts for AI tools and services in ways that …