Science and Technology Law Commons^™

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act Of 2008: History, Successes, And Future Considerations, Christine Formas Norris

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

The Technology Of Surveillance: Will The Supreme Court's Expectations Ever Resemble Society's?, Stephen Henderson

Other Faculty Publications

For law students studying criminal procedure—or at least for those cramming for the exam—it becomes a mantra: government conduct only implicates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches if it invades a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” This is not the contemporary definition of the word “search,” nor was it the definition at the time of the founding. But, via a well-intentioned concurrence by Justice Harlan in the famous 1967 case of Katz v. United States, it became the Court’s definition.This lack of fealty to the English language left some questions. For example, is determining whether someone has a “reasonable expectation …

Oysters And Oligonucleotides: Concerns And Proposals For Patenting Research Tools, Cara Koss

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Judges, Juries, And Scientific Evidence, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The rise in scientific evidence offered in American jury trials, along with court rulings thrusting judges into the business of assessing the soundness of scientific evidence, have produced challenges for judge and jury alike. Many judges have taken up the duty of becoming “amateur scientists.” But what about juries? Surely they too could benefit from assistance as they attempt to master and apply complex testimony about scientific matters during the course of a trial. Concerns about the jury’s ability to understand, critically evaluate, and employ scientific evidence in deciding complex trials have led to many suggestions for reform.

This article …

Structural Rights In Privacy, Harry Surden

Publications

This Essay challenges the view that privacy interests are protected primarily by law. Based upon the understanding that society relies upon nonlegal devices such as markets, norms, and structure to regulate human behavior, this Essay calls attention to a class of regulatory devices known as latent structural constraints and provides a positive account of their role in regulating privacy. Structural constraints are physical or technological barriers which regulate conduct; they can be either explicit or latent. An example of an explicit structural constraint is a fence which is designed to prevent entry onto real property, thereby effectively enforcing property rights. …

The Patent Office Meets The Poison Pill: Why Legal Methods Cannot Be Patented, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

In 2003, for the first time in its 170-year history, the United States Patent Office began awarding patents for novel legal innovations, in addition to traditional inventions such as the telephone or airplane. Commentators have accepted the Patent Office's power to grant legal method patents, but at the same time have criticized this new type of patent on policy grounds. But no one has suggested that the Patent Office exceeded its authority by awarding patents for legal methods, until now.

In the Patent Act of 1952, which is still in effect today, Congress established certain requirements for patentability, including a …

Layered Rights: Robertson V. Thomson, Gregory R. Hagen

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In Robertson v. Thomson Corp., the Supreme Court of Canada (‘‘ the Court ’’) considered ‘‘ whether newspaper publishers are entitled as a matter of law to republish in electronic databases freelance articles they have acquired for publication in their newspapers — without compensation to the authors and without their consent’’. Curiously, while deciding that publishers are not entitled to reproduce the individual articles without the consent of the freelancers, it also held that the publishers do have a right to reproduce the articles in a CD- ROM database ‘‘as a part of those collective works — their newspapers . …

Technological Advancement And International Human Rights: Is Science Improving Human Life Or Perpetuating Human Rights Violations?, Christine A. Khalili-Borna

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note assesses the practices of pre-implantation and prenatal genetic screening and sex-determination through an international human rights framework founded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Universal Declaration), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Standard Setting, Patents, And Access Lock-In: Rand Licensing And The Theory Of The Firm, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

Many leading voluntary standard-setting organizations (SSOs) have adopted intellectual property (IP) policies under which participants must promise to license any patents on technology that they contribute to a standard, and to do so on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms (RAND). The standard setting literature includes a substantial focus on the widespread use of this RAND promise. A common refrain in these analyses of the RAND promise is that its meaning is dysfunctionally uncertain. We know more about the RAND promise, however, than the existing literature suggests. I show that we already know the RAND promise's core meaning, and why it remains …

Should Scientific Research In The Lead-Up To Invention Vitiate Obviousness Under The Patented Medicines (Notice Of Compliance) Regulations: To Test Or Not To Test?, Ron A. Bouchard

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article is an analysis of case law pertaining to whether scientific research in the lead-up to invention should vitiate a finding of obviousness in pharmaceutical litigation under the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations (the ‘‘NOC Regulations’’). The NOC Regulations belong to a class of legal instruments referred to as ‘‘linkage regulations’’ that tie patent protection for marketed pharmaceuticals to the Canadian drug approval process. Therefore, the NOC Regulations control entry of generic drugs into the market and access by the public to affordable medication. The issue of testing arises out of the complex and inverse relationship between inventiveness …

Global Reach, Local Grasp: Constructing Extraterritorial Jurisdiction In The Age Of Globalization, Stephen Coughlan, Robert Currie, Hugh Kindred, Teresa Scassa

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The reach of national law is often greater than its grasp. Although Canada has effective legal power over its territory and all within it, Canadian interests are no longer confined exclusively within Canadian borders. Canada thus finds it increasingly necessary to consider asserting its legal jurisdiction beyond its frontiers. Such extraterritorial assertion of Canadian legal authority may run into strong opposition from other countries, who might view Canada as attempting to intervene in their own national territories and domestic affairs. Likewise, other states, under the same pressures of globalization, may try to extend their legal reach into Canadian territory, where …

Privacy, Crime And Terror: Legal Rights And Security In A Time Of Peril By Stanley A. Cohen (Markham: Lexisnexis Butterworths, 2005), Teresa Scassa

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

It is now trite to say that the events of September 11, 2001 have had a profound impact on our national security, in terms of its institutional and normative dimensions, and also in terms of a more general public anxiety. The hastily enacted Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 brought about significant changes to a wide range of statutes including, among others, the Criminal Code, the Official Secrets Act, the Canada Evidence Act, and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act. An early conference and resultant book on the Anti-terrorism Act raised serious concerns about the potential impact of the changes on …

Sustainable Intensive Agriculture: High Technology And Environmental Benefits, Drew L. Kershen

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Beyond The (Current) Fourth Amendment: Protecting Third-Party Information, Third Parties, And The Rest Of Us Too, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

For at least thirty years the Supreme Court has adhered to its third-party doctrine in interpreting the Fourth Amendment, meaning that so far as a disclosing party is concerned, information in the hands of a third party receives no Fourth Amendment protection. The doctrine was controversial when adopted, has been the target of sustained criticism, and is the predominant reason that the Katz revolution has not been the revolution many hoped it would be. Some forty years after Katz the Court's search jurisprudence largely remains tied to property conceptions. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, however, the doctrine is not the …

Network Stories, Julie E. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1962, Rachel Carson named the natural environment. Scientists were beginning to understand the complex web of ecological cause and effect; naming that web gave it independent existence and invested that existence with political meaning. In 1996, James Boyle named the cultural environment. Boyle’s act of naming was intended to jumpstart a political movement by appropriating the complex web of political meaning centered on the interdependency of environmental resources.

But naming, although important, is only a beginning. The example of the natural environment shows us that to build from a name to a movement requires two things. First, you have …

Cyberspace As/And Space, Julie E. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The appropriate role of place- and space-based metaphors for the Internet and its constituent nodes and networks is hotly contested. This essay seeks to provoke critical reflection on the implications of place- and space-based theories of cyberspace for the ongoing production of networked space more generally. It argues, first, that adherents of the cyberspace metaphor have been insufficiently sensitive to the ways in which theories of cyberspace as space themselves function as acts of social construction. Specifically, the leading theories all have deployed the metaphoric construct of cyberspace to situate cyberspace, explicitly or implicitly, as separate space. This denies all …

Animal Testing In Cosmetics: Recent Developments In The European Union And The United States, Laura Donnellan

Animal Law Review

Animal welfare has become a recent issue in the policy of the European Union. Since the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, the welfare of animals was only considered in relation to the proper functioning of the common market. Animals were seen as commodities whose interests were intertwined with agricultural and environmental policy. Over the years, the position has changed somewhat. Although a Treaty basis exists for animal welfare, the protection of animals has not yet been recognized as an important policy area of its own, and thus worthy of legal protection. As a positive step in …

Humane Education, Dissection, And The Law, Marcia Goodman Kramer

Animal Law Review

Students regularly encounter animal dissection in education, yet humane education receives little attention in animal law. This article analyzes the status of humane education laws in the United States. It discusses the range of statutory protections, from student choice laws to bans on vivisection. The article then analyzes the litigation options for students who do not wish to dissect, including constitutional claims and claims arising under student choice laws. The article concludes by calling for additional legislation to protect students who have ethical objections to dissection.

Animal Experimentation: Lessons From Human Experimentation, Arthur Birmingham Lafrance

Animal Law Review

This article is adapted from the author's presentation during the panel discussion Animals in Research: Pet Cloning, Patents, and Bioethics at the 14th Annual Animal Law Conference of Lewis & Clark Law School on October 14, 2006.

Conventional wisdom tells us that animal experimentation is a relevant precursor to human experimentation. The failings of human experimentation to be more reliable, however, casts substantial doubt on the necessity and appropriateness of experimentation on animals. The federal government and medical community, since World War II, has used the Nuremberg Code and the “common rule” to determine how to ethically conduct human experimentation. …

Contractual Expansion Of The Scope Of Patent Infringement Through Field-Of-Use Licensing, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Patentees sometimes license their inventions through field-of-use licenses, which permit licensees to use the inventions, but only in specified ways. Field-of-use licensing is often procompetitive, because the ability to provide different licensing terms for different users can encourage broader licensing of inventions. But in recent United States cases, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and lower courts have upheld field-of-use licenses prohibiting activities that licensees would otherwise have been permitted by patent law, such as the repair and resale of patented products. The recent cases rely on the Federal Circuit's decision in Mallinckrodt, Inc. v. Medipart, Inc., where the court …

Policy Making And The New Medicine: Managing A Magnificent Obsession, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Scientific issues become - inevitably - political issues because of one principal fact: they put in focus the extent to which the government can restrict private medical research undertakings - either in the name of generational safety, morality or the public good. The multiple and varied concerns of applying the New Medicine, derived as such from the New Biology, conduce - essentially - to a suspicion continued reductionism in the biological analysis of humans will erode the notions of autonomy, dignity and personal integrity that have traditionally justified the constitutional protection of civil liberties. Driven by painful technologies and sciences, …

In Pursuit Of A Next Generation Network For Public Safety Communications, Philip J. Weiser, Dale N. Hatfield

Publications

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a unitary reliance on Land Mobile Radio systems (LMRs) failed public safety agencies, leaving them without any source of communications once they lost transmission capability. Unfortunately, in the wake of this tragedy, many have dusted off traditional prescriptions for improving public safety communications, such as more dedicated spectrum and more money for single-purpose LMRs (or LMRs based on technology that fails to facilitate broader functionalities). As we explain, however, both the needs underscored by Katrina and the capabilities made possible by emerging technologies call for a different strategy.

In this paper, we argue that …

Patents On Legal Methods? No Way!, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

An “invention,” as used in the United States patent laws, refers to anything made by man that employs or harnesses a law of nature or a naturally occurring substance for human benefit. A watermill, for instance, harnesses the power of gravity to run machinery. But legal methods, such as tax strategies, are not inventions in this sense, because they employ “laws of man” — not laws of nature to produce a useful result.

Ford, Carter, And Deregulation In The 1970s, Andrew Downer Crain

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Telecom Globalization And Deregulation Encounter U.S. National Security And Labor Concerns, Warren G. Lavey

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Mystery Of The Individual In Modern Law, Jospeh Vining

Articles

To their murderers these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals. This was Telford Taylor, beginning the presentation of the "Medical Case" at the Nuremberg Trials. The "Medical Case" was not about genocide or war or the conduct of war. It was about experimentation on human beings, and it was this trial that produced the "Nuremberg Code," the first control of such treatment of human beings by one another, so surprisingly late in the history of modern scientific investigation, midtwentieth century, and so surprisingly absent everywhere before, despite the …

Table Of Contents, Journal On Telecommunications & High Technology Law

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Towards An Economic Framework For Network Neutrality Regulation, Barbara Van Schewick

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Re-Evaluating Fcc Policies Concerning The Lifeline & Link-Up Programs, Lynne Holt, Mark Jamison

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Some Peer-To-Peer, Democratically, And Voluntarily-Produced Thoughts, Ann Bartow

Colorado Technology Law Journal

No abstract provided.