Law Commons^™

"Smile, You're On Cellphone Camera!": Regulating Online Video Privacy In The Myspace Generation, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In the latest Batman movie, Bruce Wayne’s corporate right hand man, Lucius Fox, copes stoically with the death and destruction dogging his boss. Interestingly, the last straw for him is Bruce’s request that he use digital video surveillance created through the city’s cellphone network to spy on the people of Gotham City in order to locate the Joker. Does this tell us something about the increasing social importance of privacy, particularly in an age where digital video technology is ubiquitous and largely unregulated?

While much digital privacy law and commentary has focused on text files containing personal data, little attention …

Cyberlaw 2.0, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In the early days of the Internet, Judge Frank Easterbrook famously dismissed the idea of an emerging field of cyberspace law as akin to a “law of the horse”— a pastiche of unrelated legal principles tied together only by virtue of applying to the Internet, having no unifying principles that would teach us anything meaningful. This article revisits Easterbrook’s assertions with the benefit of hindsight. It suggests that subsequent case law and legislative developments in fact do support a distinct cyberlaw field. It introduces the novel argument that cyberlaw is a global “law of the intermediated information exchange.” In other …

Celebrity In Cyberspace: A Personality Rights Paradigm For Personal Domain Name Disputes, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

When the Oscar™-winning actress Julia Roberts fought for control of the domain name, what was her aim? Did she want to reap economic benefits from the name? Probably not, as she has not used the name since it was transferred to her. Or did she want to prevent others from using it on either an unjust enrichment or a privacy basis? Was she, in fact, protecting a trademark interest in her name? Personal domain name disputes, particularly those in the space, implicate unique aspects of an individual’s persona in cyberspace. Nevertheless, most of the legal rules developed for these disputes …

Food For Thought: Genetically Modified Seeds As De Facto Standard Essential Patents, Benjamin M. Cole, Brent J. Horton, Ryan G. Vacca

Akron Law Faculty Publications

For several years, courts have been improperly calculating damages in cases involving the unlicensed use of genetically-modified (GM) seed technology. In particular, when courts determine patent damages based on the hypothetical negotiation method, they err in exaggerating these damages to a point where no rational negotiator would agree. In response, we propose a limited affirmative defense of an implied license due to the patent’s status as a de facto standard essential patent. To be classified as a de facto standard essential patent, the farmer must prove three elements that reflect the peculiarities of GM seeds used in farming: (1) dominance, …