Law Commons^™

Personalized Smart Guns: A Futuristic Dream Or A Pragmatic Solution?, Andres Paciuc

Duke Law & Technology Review

No abstract provided.

Governing The Interface Between Natural And Formal Language In Smart Contracts, Joshua A.T. Fairfield, Niloufer Selvadurai

Scholarly Articles

Much of the confusion about the proper regulation of smart contracts stems from the fact that both code and law are expressed in language. Natural (human) and formal (computer) languages are profoundly different, however. Natural language in the form of a true legal contract expresses human meaning and expectation. Code simply acts, and when code acts contrary to the understanding of the parties to a contract, courts must have a theoretical and legal basis in order to intervene--which this Article provides.

Present scholarship on the governance of smart contracts centers on logistical problems relating to the effects of automation on …

Tokenized: The Law Of Non-Fungible Tokens And Unique Digital Property, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

Markets for unique digital property--digital equivalents of rare artworks, collectible trading cards, and other assets that gain value from scarcity--have exploded in the past few years. At root is the next iteration of blockchain technology, unique digital assets called non-fungible tokens. Unlike bitcoin, where one coin is the same as another, NFTs are unique, each with different attributes. An NFT that represented ownership of Boardwalk would be quite different from one that represented Baltic Avenue.

NFTs have grown from a few early breakout successes to a rapidly developing market for unique digital treasures. The attraction to buyers is that, unlike …

Property As The Law Of Virtual Things, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

Property law in the twentieth century moved from the law of things to the law of rights in things. This was a process of fragmentation: Under Hohfeldian property, we conceive of property as a bundle of sticks, and those sticks can be moved to different holders; the right to possess can be separated from the record ownership right, for example. The downside of Hohfeld's model is that physical objects—things—become informationally complicated. Thing-ness constrains the extravagances of Hohfeldian property: although we can split off the right to possess from the right to exclude, use, destroy, copy, manage, repair, and so on, …

Passcodes, Protection, And Legal Practicality: The Necessity Of A Digital Fifth Amendment, Ethan Swierczewski

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Justice Breyer And Patent Eligibility, 21 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 71 (2022), David Taylor

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Privacy Aspects Of Direct-To-Consumer Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Health Apps, Sara Gerke, Delaram Rezaeikhonakdar

Faculty Scholarly Works

Direct-To-Consumer Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning health apps (DTC AI/ML health apps) are increasingly being made available for download in app stores. However, such apps raise challenges, one of which is providing adequate protection of consumers' privacy. This article analyzes the privacy aspects of DTC AI/ML health apps and suggests how consumers' privacy could be better protected in the United States. In particular, it discusses the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act, the FTC's Health Breach Notification Rule, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, the …

Liability For Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Medicine, W. Nicholson Price, Sara Gerke, I. Glenn Cohen

Law & Economics Working Papers

While artificial intelligence has substantial potential to improve medical practice, errors will certainly occur, sometimes resulting in injury. Who will be liable? Questions of liability for AI-related injury raise not only immediate concerns for potentially liable parties, but also broader systemic questions about how AI will be developed and adopted. The landscape of liability is complex, involving health-care providers and institutions and the developers of AI systems. In this chapter, we consider these three principal loci of liability: individual health-care providers, focused on physicians; institutions, focused on hospitals; and developers.

Dignity, Intersectional Gendered Harm, And A Flexible Approach: Analysis Of The Right To One’S Image In Quebec, Yuan Stevens

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article draws on critical feminist theory and the framework of intersectionality to examine how courts in Quebec have begun — and are poised — to respond to the phenomenon of the non-consensual sharing of images, particularly if they are of an intimate or sexual nature. Dunn’s work has demonstrated that Quebec’s dignity-focused approach to the protection of identity and privacy ought to guide the development of similar civil recourse provided in common law Canada. This paper fills a gap by identifying the affordances and gaps of Quebec’s legal approach from the vantage point of equality-seeking groups, with a particular …

Privacy In Wearables: Innovation, Regulation, Or Neither, Kenny Gutierrez

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Symposium On The Retirement Of Justice Stephen Breyer, 21 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 35 (2022), William Ford

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Justice Breyer: No Friend To Ip Law, 21 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 58 (2022), Kevin Noonan

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Van Buren V. United States: An Employer Defeat Or Hacker’S Victory – Or Something In Between, 21 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 166 (2022), Melanie Assad

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The United States Stands Alone: A Divergence In The Treatment Of Genus Claims In Pharmaceutical Patents, 22 Uic Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 97 (2022), Sam Habein

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Researching It Law, Keith Lacy

Law Librarian Scholarship

Information technology law is a broad field of legal rules and practice relating to computers and digital networks. Sometimes referred to as computer law or cyberlaw, IT law does not represent a substantive body of law such as contracts or criminal law. In 1996, U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Frank H. Easterbrook memorably argued that there was no “computer law” in the same way that there was no “law of the horse.”

Recognition of IT law as a distinct field instead comes from an awareness that 1) the effects of information communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly ubiquitous and …

Data Property, James Grimmelmann, Christina Mulligan

American University Law Review

In this, the Information Age, people and businesses depend on data. From your family photos to Google’s search index, data has become one of society’s most important resources. But there is a gaping hole in the law’s treatment of data. If someone destroys your car, they have committed the tort of conversion, and the law gives a remedy. But if someone deletes your data, it is far from clear that they have done you a legally actionable wrong. If you are lucky, and the data was stored on your own computer, you may be able to sue them for trespass …

Exceptional Driving Principles For Autonomous Vehicles, A. D'Amato, S. Dancel, J. Pilutti, L. Tellis, E. Frascaroli, J. C. Gerdes

Journal of Law and Mobility

Public expectations for automated vehicles span a broad range, from mobility for passengers, to road user safety, to compliance with the traffic code. In most ordinary situations, these expectations can be satisfied simultaneously. But these various expectations can also lead to exceptional scenarios where certain objectives, such as those related to safety, are in tension with road rules. Exceptional driving scenarios challenge motion planning algorithms in automated vehicles to find solutions that are legally grounded, ethically sound, and technically feasible.

The general public’s familiarity with exceptional driving scenarios comes from the classic "Trolley Car" problem in philosophy, asking who should …

Setting The Agenda: The Legal And Historical Context To Best Understand How Transportation Technology Might Be Regulated To Combat Forced Labor, Brittany Eastman

Journal of Law and Mobility

Transportation is a piece of all human activity. As individuals and as a society, the logistics of getting people and goods from one place to another is a question we answer countless times a day. Just today, billions of people drove to work, took the bus to school, used a rideshare to get to the store, or took the train into the city to enjoy an evening out on the town. This list does not even consider all the items people have ordered online which will be shipped and delivered to homes. Even more exciting is the innovation that inspired …

The Mental Health Crisis On Campus: Liability Implications Of Using Emerging Technology, Betsy J. Grey

American University Law Review

Institutions of higher education are facing a “mental health crisis.” Students are experiencing high rates of mental health issues, exacerbated by the pandemic. At the same time, the severity of psychological disorders is accelerating among students. These developments have put enormous pressure on traditional university support systems, and schools have turned to new technologies, like online mental health resources and monitoring systems using artificial intelligence, to expand their mental health services. This article explores the liability implications of using these emerging technologies to address these escalating needs. Universities offer mental health services in good faith to help their students succeed, …

Considering "Machine Testimony": The Impact Of Facial Recognition Software On Eyewitness Identifications, Valena Beety

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article uses a wrongful conviction lens to compare identifications by machines, notably facial recognition software, with identifications by humans. The Article advocates for greater reliability checks on both before use against a criminal defendant. The Article examines the cascading influence of facial recognition software on eyewitness identifications themselves and the related potential for greater errors. As a solution, the Article advocates the inclusion of eyewitness identification in the Organization of Scientific Area Committees' ("OSAC") review of facial recognition software for a more robust examination and consideration of software and its usage. The Article also encourages police departments to adopt …

Ways To Grow: New Directions For Agricultural Technology Policy

Tech Policy Lab

This whitepaper, which grows out of interdisciplinary research at the University of Washington Tech Policy Lab, argues for a widening of the aperture with respect to contemporary technology policy in agriculture. Emerging technology could, as advertised, reduce costs and increase food production. But the industrial model of agriculture that technology currently supports—focused on faster, more, and cheaper— has its tradeoffs. Precision agriculture remakes the land to serve technology, introduces new sources of instability into agriculture, and contributes to the destabilization and vulnerability of the American food system. Greater resources should be allocated to “civic” agricultural approaches that transition away from …

Limiting The Boundaries Of Assisted Reproductive Technology And Physiological Autonomy, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This essay examines, critically, the wide successes of assisted reproductive technology (ART). With these successes have come concerns regarding its potential advancement of the boundaries of fecundity and of new levels of physiological freedom. One particular advancement involves efforts to utilize a phenomenon of nature termed parthenogenesis, or asexual reproduction. The potential for adapting this occurrence as a form of assisted reproduction is of particular interest for members of the LGBTQ community, holding great promise for embryo research and regenerative medicine. Parthenogenetic embryos could be derived from unfertilized human eggs and, thus, blunt--if not resolve--ethical concerns over experimentation on human …

Masthead

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Jenny Sui, Nick Wood

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

For The Betterment Of All Mankind: Claiming The Benefits Of Outer Space Through Intellectual Property Rights, Maeve Dineen

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Standardizing State Vote-By-Mail Deadlines In Federal Elections, Jason Nagel

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

The litigation over the vote-by-mail process during the 2020 general election revealed that absentee ballot voting disputes should not be left entirely to the courts. Rather, this Note argues that Congress should utilize its constitutional Elections Clause power to standardize federal vote-by-mail processes, and proposes specific elements that Congress should include in such legislation.

Something For Nothing: Untangling A Knot Of Section 230 Solutions, Nicholas Bradley

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

Social media platforms have become the dominant public forum of the modern age but there is a big problem: they are privately owned and can moderate content however they like. This right is protected both by the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the latter of which creates immunity from suit for platforms that exercise their right to moderate content by removing—or not removing—objectionable content. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have complained that platforms are abusing this immunity and, while they have put forward a wide variety of legislative solutions, none of them have …

Griswold For Google: Algorithmic Determinism And Decisional Privacy, Joshua Fairfield, Nathaniel Reynolds

Scholarly Articles

As surveillance capitalism continues to collect data and automate decisions, those on the receiving end of such actions are often rendered speechless. We are less left in awe of the great force of these technologies than we lack the language that could properly define and defend against their onslaught. Often, we feel powerless as our data is extracted then aimed at us to manipulate our own choices, and yet the conversation around these practices seems stultified. Algorithms have shifted the technological landscape by co-opting human decision-making and in the process co-opted the very tool that we use to respond to …

Artificial Intelligence And Inventorship – Does The Patent Inventor Have To Be Human?, Mimi S. Afshar

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Robophobia, Andrew Keane Woods

University of Colorado Law Review

Robots-machines, algorithms, artificial intelligence-play an increasingly important role in society, often supplementing or even replacing human judgment. Scholars have rightly become concerned with the fairness, accuracy, and humanity of these systems. Indeed, anxiety about machine bias is at a fever pitch. While these concerns are important, they nearly all run in one direction: we worry about robot bias against humans; we rarely worry about human bias against robots.

This is a mistake. Not because robots deserve, in some deontological sense, to be treated fairly-although that may be true-but because our bias against nonhuman deciders is bad for us. For example, …