Law Commons^™

Turning A New Leaf: A Privacy Analysis Of Carwings Electric Vehicle Data Collection And Transmission, Francesca Svarcas

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Copyrights In The Stream: The Battle On Webcasting, Eldar Haber

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

The Internet threatens many right holders who consistently battle against technologies that enable people to use their copyrighted materials without their consent. While copyright holders have succeeded in some cases, their main battle against peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing has yet to be resolved. Another technology that threatens right holders’ business models, especially in the film industry, is the distribution of their content freely via webcasting. Although right holders have paid little attention to webcasting as they continue their campaign against P2P file-sharing, it poses similar threats and presents the likely possibility of a future copyright battle.

This Article examines copyright and …

Best Practices For The Law Of The Horse: Teaching Cyberlaw And Illuminating Law Through Online Simulations, Ira Steven Nathenson

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

In an influential 1996 article entitled Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse, Judge Frank Easterbrook mocked cyberlaw as a subject lacking in cohesion and therefore unworthy of inclusion in the law school curriculum. Responses to Easterbrook, most notably that of Lawrence Lessig in his 1999 article The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach, have taken a theoretical approach. However, this Article—also appropriating the “Law of the Horse” moniker—concludes that Easterbrook’s challenge is primarily pedagogical, requiring a response keyed to whether cyberlaw ought to be taught in law schools. The Article concludes that despite Easterbrook’s concerns, cyberlaw presents …

The Shape Of Things To Come: What We Can Learn From Patent Claim Length, Kristen Osenga

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Technology is always changing. Patent law is also constantly evolving, as the courts and Congress continue to make significant changes to this area of law. But what about patents themselves? Some studies have looked at how patent specifications have changed over time, but no one has looked specifically at the most important aspect of a patent, its claims. Given the changes in technology and law, one would anticipate patent claims to have evolved.

Despite the expectations, this paper concludes that patent claim shape is largely unaffected by time, technology, crowded fields, or prosecution time. This paper suggests a possible reason …

Why We Need A Strong Patent System And When: Filling The Void Left By The Bilski Case, Richard S. Gruner

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Patent law is presently under-theorized. Patents are granted to serve as rewards for certain types of inventive successes, but the nature of the successes to be rewarded, the circumstances that should trigger rewards, and the size of the rewards that will best serve the public remain in substantial dispute. One of the primary reasons for these uncertainties is the incompleteness of underlying theories explaining why patented inventions deserve special treatment and rewards. The lack of good understanding of the theoretical justifications for patent rewards (and the limitations of those justifications) means that patent law standards are being reconsidered and revised …

Trademark And Copyright Enforcement In The Shadow Of Ip Law, William T. Gallagher

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

In recent years, as Congress has created new intellectual property (IP) rights and courts have often interpreted those rights broadly, legal scholars have frequently decried the expanded scope of protection afforded IP owners in most substantive areas of IP law. According to this critique, the over-expansion of IP rights throughout the past two decades harms competition, chills free speech, and diminishes the public domain as increasingly broad areas of social life are brought within the scope of strong IP protection. While this over-expansion theory reflects an important—indeed, foundational—policy debate concerning the proper balance between IP owners’ rights and the public’s …