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Full-Text Articles in Law

Text Messages Are Property: Why You Don’T Own Your Text Messages, But It’D Be A Lot Cooler If You Did, Spence M. Howden Jun 2019

Text Messages Are Property: Why You Don’T Own Your Text Messages, But It’D Be A Lot Cooler If You Did, Spence M. Howden

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note proceeds as follows: Part II offers a brief overview of what text messages are and what they are not. Part III covers the history of intangible personal property law and reviews the evolution of “cybertrespass” claims. Part IV explores the judiciary and the Fourth Amendment’s failure to protect text messages. Finally, Part V evaluates whether text messages constitute property and the practical implications of this finding.


Healthtech: How Blockchain Can Simplify Healthcare Compliance, Kathryn M. Bennett Mar 2019

Healthtech: How Blockchain Can Simplify Healthcare Compliance, Kathryn M. Bennett

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note broadly explores solutions to modern-day accessibility and security problems latent in electronic health records. Specifically, this Note discusses HIPAA and HITECH, the current law in place, and how blockchain technology can be used to fix the accessibility and security problems of current electronic health records. This Note proposes that blockchain technology can help a healthcare industry struggling to adhere to the current rule of law in an era of Big Data. Further, Blockchain technology can help individual consumers, particularly those with significant health issues, obtain the best possible medical care while simultaneously keeping their private and sensitive information …


Artificial Intelligence And Patent Ownership, W. Michael Schuster Feb 2019

Artificial Intelligence And Patent Ownership, W. Michael Schuster

Washington and Lee Law Review

Invention by artificial intelligence (AI) is the future of innovation. Unfortunately, as discovered through Freedom of Information Act requests, the U.S. patent regime has yet to determine how it will address patents for inventions created solely by AI (AI patents). This Article fills that void by presenting the first comprehensive analysis on the allocation of patent rights arising from invention by AI. To this end, this Article employs Coase Theorem and its corollaries to determine who should be allowed to secure these patents to maximize economic efficiency. The study concludes that letting firms using AI to create new technologies (as …