Law Commons^™

Regulating Data Monetization, Peter Ormerod

Texas A&M Law Review

Companies today generate hundreds of billions of dollars each year by collecting massive amounts of information about human activity and wringing predictive insights from it. The scale of these influence activities is stunning: your driving habits dictate your car insurance rates, buying the wrong thing will increase your borrowing costs, and the information ecosystem you inhabit is finely tuned for keeping your attention available to the highest bidder.

States have recently enacted new consumer privacy laws that confer on individuals a series of generally applicable rights over their personal information. But this approach has proven ineffective at disciplining firms’ data …

Adjudicating 35 U.S.C. § 112(A): The "Person Of Ordinary Skill In The Art" Conundrum And How To Address It, Matthew T. Simmons

Texas A&M Law Review

A viable alternative for adjudicating issues under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) of the Patent Act is needed due to the difficulties of trying these issues to a lay jury. Congress agreed when it enacted the America Invents Act (“AIA”), which created alternative proceedings for challenging patent validity post-grant, including post-grant review (“PGR”) and inter partes review (“IPR”). In theory, PGR proceedings permit the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to adjudicate whether one or more claims of a patent are valid on § 112 grounds. In practice, history has shown that the limitations …

Combatting Ai-Generated Child Sexual Exploitation And Abuse Material: An Analysis Of India’S Techno-Legal Response, Dhruv Garg, Dedipyaman Shukla

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) presents a significant threat to child safety online, enabling the rapid creation and dissemination of child sexual exploitation and abuse material (“CSEAM”) at an unprecedented scale. This paper examines legal, institutional, and technical responses to AI-generated CSEAM in the Indian context, with a particular focus on the role of digital intermediaries, law enforcement coordination through the Sahyog Portal, and judicial interpretation under Indian law. Drawing on this analysis of key stakeholders, the paper argues for the orientation of India’s CSEAM framework towards proactive detection, and better integration between intermediaries and law enforcement. The …

Addressing Legal Uncertainties In Article Versions And Institutional Copyright Policies To Support Immediate Public Access To Federal Grant-Funded Publications, Yuanxiao Xu

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

New federal public access policies—mandated by the 2022 OSTP Memo and already adopted by several key federal grant-making agencies—require authors funded by federal grants to deposit peer-reviewed publications for immediate public access. This paper explains how grant- receiving institutions and their affiliated authors can dispel legal uncertainties and comply with the new public access policies. Section I delineates how valid prior licenses enable public deposit of manuscripts notwithstanding later publishing agreements transferring copyright to the journals. Section II discusses the different versions of a manuscript created during the publication process. Section III describes the different types of third-party contributions incorporated …

Masthead

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

No abstract provided.

Ip @ The U - April 2026, Jorge L. Contreras, Jonas Anderson

Law School Historical Documents

Welcome to IP @ the U, a periodic newsletter for students, alumni, faculty and friends of the University of Utah College of Law's Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law. This issue covers highlights from spring 2026.

Voices From Beyond The Grave: Protecting The Audio Of Murder Victims Through (Intellectual) Property Law, Alexandra M. Hudson

Washington and Lee Law Review

For most, the audio of a deceased loved one is a treasured keepsake. For the families of violent crime victims, it can be a harrowing reminder of their loved one’s death. And it can also be a source of content for true crime podcasters.

When a person dies from a violent crime and their killer is prosecuted, the audio associated with the crime (body camera footage, 911 calls, surveillance footage, etc.) frequently becomes public record. Public record laws vary greatly across the United States but typically err toward disclosure to promote government transparency. Broad public record laws benefit the public …

Private Coverage, Public Risk: The Role Of Cyber Insurance In National Security Governance, Deborah L. Johnson

Faculty Publications

This Article explores the growing yet underexamined role of the commercial cyber insurance market in shaping the United States' approach to cybersecurity readiness. It argues that, as cyber threats against U.S. critical infrastructure and essential services increase, commercial cyber insurance has quietly come to function as a de facto governance tool in national cybersecurity. In hospitals, water and energy systems, and other public-facing sectors, policy language, underwriting questionnaires, and post-breach claims practices help define what counts as "reasonable" security, influence how organizations plan for and respond to incidents, and affect the pace and scope of recovery after an attack. Yet …

To Compete Or Noncompete: Lessons On The Impact Of Unenforceable Noncompete Agreements In The Entertainment Industry, Guy Mannick

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Economic and legal literature has increasingly focused on how the American legal system fails workers. One way it does so is through employee noncompetition agreements (“NCA” or “noncompete”) that limit a worker’s ability to join another company, often for better compensation and/or more responsibility. Some states enforce NCAs if they are reasonable in scope, geography, and duration; others either prohibit their application to certain types of workers or (as in California) outright prohibit them in most circumstances. More narrowly, new empirical literature about the behavioral effects of unenforceable noncompete agreements raises new questions about the behavioral impact on workers.

This …

The Racialized Treadmill Of Robotic Agriculture: Colonial Legacies, Legal Exceptionalism, And Labour Control, Vasanthi Venkatesh

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The title of this paper draws on two historical meanings of the word ‘‘treadmill”. First, it references the economic concept of the ‘‘agricultural technology treadmill”, which describes how technological advances in farming lead to market consolidation, pushing smaller producers out while benefiting agribusiness oligopolies. Second, it invokes the literal treadmill, which was invented in 1818 as a punitive labour technology and a ‘‘rational” tool to discipline racialized and indentured labourers in colonial plantations. By connecting these two threads in agricultural technology — economic domination and racialized labor control — this paper examines how robotics and automation in modern agriculture perpetuate …

Consensus Ad Artificialis: Contract Theory Meets The Genai Mind, Katie Szilagyi, Marina Pavlovic´

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The advent of generative AI (GenAI) has generated shockwaves across industries. Many established professions are grappling with how GenAI’s functionality transforms their daily activities, staying power, and raison d’eˆtre. GenAI’s newfound facility with words and language has rapidly encroached upon the purview of lawyers, whose trade has long been expertise with words. While some worry about lawyers’ place in a GenAI-oriented future economy, others are optimistic about the transformative potential GenAI offers as a tool to the practicing lawyer. Legal service providers have been quick to adopt GenAI tools in the name of efficiency, harnessing its generative power for tasks …

United States Response To Questionnaire: Alai Congress 2026 - Copyright And Free Expression In The Age Of Algorithms, Philippa Loengard

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

ALAI-USA is the U.S. branch of ALAI (Association Littèraire et Artistique Internationale). ALAI-USA was started in the 1980's by the late Professor Melville B. Nimmer, and was later expanded by Professor John M. Kernochan.

How Ip Ends, Dave Fagundes, Aaron Perzanowski

Articles

Real and personal property may last forever, but intellectual property (IP) ends. Despite the doctrinal complexity and practical significance of the mechanisms that terminate IP rights, scholarship has scarcely focused on them, and none has analyzed these doctrines as a unified field. As a result, the discourse about the ways IP ends remains impoverished, with courts, legislatures, and commentators offering imprecise and inconsistent formulations that obscure the rationales for these doctrines. This Article offers the first comprehensive taxonomy of IP’s terminal mechanisms, providing much-needed conceptual and definitional coherence. It then reveals the underappreciated policy leverage these mechanisms can deliver and …

Cognitive Warfare: Generative Ai, False Realities, And International Humanitarian Law, Gary Corn

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This paper, written as a draft chapter for the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare's forthcoming book on International Law and Artificial Intelligence in Armed Conflict: The AI-Cyber Interplay, explores the IHL implications of a specific subfield or category of AI—Generative AI (GenAI). This new and rapidly evolving technology does not merely analyze or classify data; it also generates original image, audio, and video content. This synthetic content can be highly deceptive and manipulative, as in the case of so-called “deepfakes.” Combined with other information and communications technologies (ICT) and AI capabilities, GenAI has the potential to drastically transform …

Scraping Bad: The Case For A Unified Scraping Framework, Eunchong Moses Park

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Note explores the growing legal and regulatory landscapes of web scraping in the United States and argues that web scraping should be regulated through a unified federal framework tailored to its unique technological and economic realities. Web scraping allows organizations to collect massive amounts of data essential to their operational needs—often without the consent of data holders. Thus, web scraping has become a powerful engine of innovation used across virtually every sector of the economy but with a serious risk to privacy and property interests. Yet the current U.S. legal framework lacks a coherent regulating structure. Courts and litigants …

Comment On “Voices From Beyond The Grave: Protecting The Audio Of Murder Victims Through (Intellectual) Property Law” By Alexandra M. Hudson, Christopher B. Seaman

Washington and Lee Law Review

Alex’s Note correctly identifies the tension between two important, competing values when it comes to how the law should deal with the sound recordings of murder victims captured in a public record, such as a 911 call or body camera footage. The first value is government transparency, including disclosure of public records through federal and state Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs). As the Supreme Court has explained, “[t]he basic purpose of FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption, and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.” …

Morocco’S Liquid Gold: The Actual And Potential Role Of International Ip Law In The Protection Of The Traditional Knowledge Of Argan Oil, Christen Smith

Student Scholarship

This paper examines the actual and potential role of international intellectual property law in the protection of the traditional knowledge associated with argan oil, a product linked to the cultural heritage of the indigenous people in Morocco and increasingly commercialized globally. The paper starts with a background on the argan forest and the cultural significance of the argan tree. Then, the traditional production method used to extract argan oil is discussed. The paper also covers the rise of women’s cooperatives and how the argan oil industry has economically transformed in recent decades. The next section identifies problems in protecting traditional …

Resolving Cross-Border Nft Disputes: Jurisdictional Approaches, Smart Contracts, And Proposed Solutions, Aparna Vaitla

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The emergence of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) has significantly impacted the enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights, particularly in the digital environment. NFTs enable the creation, transfer, and monetization of unique digital assets such as artwork, music, and virtual goods, raising new legal challenges for IP protection. Among various IP concerns, copyright law is the most directly implicated in NFT-related disputes. While existing copyright frameworks remain broadly applicable, they require refined interpretation and targeted regulatory adaptation to address blockchain-specific issues such as pseudonymity, decentralized ownership, and cross-border enforcement. This Article focuses exclusively on copyright law, examining its applicability to NFT transactions …

We Robot 2025: Connecting Global Robotics And Ai Governance Experts In Canada, Kristen Thomasen, Suzie Dunn

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This special We Robot issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology is particularly ‘‘special” to us for a variety of reasons. It presents an important opportunity to highlight the interdisciplinarity required to meaningfully engage with robotics and artificial intelligence (‘‘AI”) regulation. It highlights the growing international connections among law and technology scholars. And it features many of the cutting-edge papers from one of the world’s premier law and robotics conferences, We Robot.

The thirteenth annual We Robot 2025 conference was held at the University of Windsor in April 2025. This conference marked the first ever in-person gathering of …

To Smile Or Not To Smile? What Policymakers Need To Know About The Interplay Between Expressive Robotics And Public Perception, Adeline Schneider, Waseq Billah, Naomi T. Fitter

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The growing presence of autonomous delivery robots (ADRs) in public spaces has introduced new challenges regarding public perception, safety, and policy regulation. While ADRs provide a convenient, contactless delivery solution, there has been little research exploring how their design influences public acceptance and regulatory concerns. This study investigates the impact of expressive robotic features on perceptions of ADRs through a between-subjects online survey comparing two ADR models: the expressive Dax robot and the more widely deployed Starship robot. Participants answered questions about the robots’ expressivity and policy-relevant perceptions surrounding the robot. Findings showed a mix of enhancements from added robot …

Interoperable Ai Regulation, Jennifer Raso

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article explores ‘‘interoperability” as a new goal in AI regulation in Canada and beyond. Drawing on sociotechnical, computer science, and digital government literatures, it traces interoperability’s conceptual genealogy to reveal an underlying politics that prioritizes harmony over discord and consistency over plurality. This politics, the article argues, is in tension with the distinct role of statutory law (as opposed to regulation) in a democratic society. Legislation is not simply a technology through which one achieves the smooth operation of governance. Rather, legislation is better understood as a ‘‘boundary object”: an information system through which members of different communities make …

Generating Personal Data And The Gdpr Conceptualizing, Analyzing, And Recognizing Generated Personal Data, Hideyuki Matsumi

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In 2014, to fight the littering problem, an environmental group posted portraits of potential litterbugs on public streets. The group extracted DNA from tossed cigarettes, coffee cups, or condoms, and generated the possible likeness of individuals whose DNA was found from these items in public. Similarly, in 2017, detectives working on a cold case sent DNA found at the crime scene of a homicide and sexual assault victim from 1990 to a company that claims it ‘‘can turn DNA into a face”. Subsequently, detectives published the ‘‘predicted face” in an attempt to solicit tips from the public. In 2020, they …

R-Ai-Sing Questions: Exploring The Ethical And Legal Landscape Of Artificial Intelligence-Generated Media Of Medicalized Children, Kristen Thomasen, Gregorio Zuniga-Villaneuva, Muhammed Mukadam, David Lysecki

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

When it comes to complex medical care for children, even in a country like Canada with many publicly funded healthcare services, much of the necessary research and holistic support for children and families is financed through private donations. Fundraising campaigns for children’s hospitals and services are common, often featuring movie stars, professional athletes, and many child patients. A range of important charitable activities, providing comfort, services, and necessities such as food and accommodation to children and families, are carried out through fundraising and donations. Fundraising for children’s services is a multibillion-dollar global undertaking. What’s more, it is largely dependent on …

Game Face: Legal Tackle On Facial Recognition And Privacy Rights At Nfl Games, Shanthi E. Senthe

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The unprecedented rapid uptake of facial recognition technology (‘‘FRT”) in commercial and public spaces for data capture and surveillance has entrenched every aspect of our daily lives from mundane tasks, such as grocery store shopping to family and experiential moments, such as participation in spectator sports. As such, the rapid adoption and integration of FRT into sports security is reshaping aspects of sporting events and fan experiences, often without adequate consideration of privacy and ethical implications. Professional sports leagues, specifically the NFL, are in the process of adopting the use of this type of technology to enhance security measures, streamlining …

Table Of Contents

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

No abstract provided.

Threads Of Protection: Intellectual Property Protections For Fashion Designs In The Age Of Generative Ai, Nayomi Mendez Andrade

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This Article examines the limitations of intellectual property law in the United States for fashion designers and their creations. In doing so, it considers the impact generative artificial intelligence technologies have had on such protections. Despite fashion’s cultural and economic significance, U.S. law offers only fragmented protection through copyrights, trademarks, trade dress, and patents. Copyright law is significantly constrained by the useful article doctrine and the separability requirement articulated in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands. Thus, copyrights only protect separable artistic elements rather than garments as a whole. Trademark and trade dress protections are typically only effective for well-established brands, …

Generated Wills And Responsible Ai Use In Estate Law, Collin Peters

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Generative AI tools have been increasingly used by corporations and individuals to create documents quickly and cheaply based on short human inputs. The coming of widely accessible and cheap-to-use generative AI tools introduces the possibility of firms or lay testators using AI to generate wills. However, the risks of using AI to generate wills are largely unexplored and have not received much regulatory attention nor discussion in the literature. As a result, the question of how to manage the risks of AI-generated wills in a way that ensures their safe, accessible, and productive use has largely gone unaddressed. This article …

From Software To Models: Rethinking Open Source In The Age Of Generative Ai, Dana Beldiman

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Open-source software (OSS), a form of distributed and collaborative software development rooted in the ethos of early computer science, has evolved into an essential component of modern digital infrastructure. This article asks whether open source will assume a similarly transformative role within the emerging technological paradigm of generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Generative AI differs fundamentally from software: its constituent artifacts, architectures, generative capacities, and deployment contexts are distinct and substantially more complex. Despite these differences, foundation models continue to be released under licenses originally designed for software, which may not constitute a valid transfer of rights in the generative AI …

Cardozo Law Introduces New Course On Theatre Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

Cardozo School of Law introduced Theatre Law, the first law school course devoted entirely to the legal framework of the live stage industry. Taught by Adjunct Professor Ben Feldman, the course explores contracts, intellectual property, labor relations, licensing, financing, and other legal issues unique to theatrical productions, providing students with specialized training in entertainment law.

Falling Flat: Why Ai Cannot Free Melodies From Copyright Protection With “All The Music” As An Example, Hayley Huber

Duke Law & Technology Review

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to surprise us with its humanlike abilities, it raises the question of whether AI-created music can or should be afforded legal protection. Particularly, how should copyright law treat melodies produced by an AI designed to algorithmically generate every possible melody? This article seeks to answer that question, ultimately concluding that AI-produced melodies are not copyrightable and that melodies are not merely facts undeserving of copyright protection, but something valuable to mankind and worth protecting by law.

The article explores Damien Riehl’s All the Music project (ATM) and his arguments for why ATM’s outputs should be …