Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Editors And Staff Members

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Paving A New (Hua)Wei: A Comparative Analysis Of International Approaches To Securing Information And Communication Technology Supply Chains, Jordan Villegas

Catholic University Law Review

Recent amendments to Chinese Intelligence Laws codify affirmative obligations upon domestic companies and citizens alike, namely, that they must assist and support the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its intelligence gathering efforts. Coupling these laws with the international prevalence of Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company comprising two-thirds of 5G equipment outside China, CCP compromised 5G equipment is an unassailable reality. This article explores five intelligence allied nations and how each has respectively addressed the risk posed by Huawei. It argues each nation’s policies are deducible to three primary approaches, categorically including: (1) promulgation of law explicitly excluding Huawei 5G equipment; …

The Broad Institute Scores Another Victory In Its Battle With The University Of California Over The Patenting Of Cripsr, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Session 4: Plunging Into Deep Water: An Immersion In Fintech, Defi (Decentralized Finance), & Web3, Joseph M. Vincent

SITIE Symposiums

This panel featured entrepreneurs providing their expert insight into the background, workings, and expected developments of the FinTech industry. Moderated by Adjunct Professor of Law Joseph M. Vincent, the panel features Ron Oliveira, Kory Hoang, and Jonathan Blanco.

The panelists provided insight on topics regarding: (1) the fundamental changes in financial services since the advent of FinTech; (2) background on the Stablecoin industry including a background of what Stablecoin is, and why it has been under recent scrutiny; and (3) the NFT market and the direction the NFT space is heading. In a Q&A session, the panelists also offered their …

Session 3: Deep Innovation Dive In Health Equity: Truveta (“Saving Lives With Data”), Steve Tapia, Dave Heiner

SITIE Symposiums

This session is a “deep dive” into health equity and research via a moderated discussion with Truveta, a new data partnership company poised for research breakthroughs in the healthcare sector. In it, Dave Heiner, General Counsel and Chief Policy Officer for Truveta, discusses the company’s healthcare-centered mission and the key role that data plays in the healthcare field.

Session 2: Diversity Perspectives: In-House Counsel, Debbie Akhbari

SITIE Symposiums

This expert panel addressed diversity perspectives in the legal field. Moderated by Debbie Akhbari, six panelists shared their stories. The panelists were Leticia Hernández, Bernadette Lopez, Elida Moran, Catherine Romero, Rachel Seals, and Katina Thornock. Each panelist's stories have been broken into its own section in the summary of proceedings.

Many diverse candidates have incorrect assumptions made about them, resulting in doors being closed by those in positions of power. This panel shared their personal stories and encouraged students and newer attorneys to keep “knocking on those doors” and for those in positions of power to open those doors. Through …

Session 1: Innovation In Legal Services, Steven W. Bender, Michael Cherry, Matthew Spencer

SITIE Symposiums

This panel featured two “disrupters” who detailed their experiences innovating in the legal services space. The first panelist spoke about data-driven regulatory reform and the other spoke as an entrepreneur whose product introduces artificial intelligence (AI) into the legal recruiting process. Two additional panelists provided commentary regarding the second panelist’s presentation.

The panel provided insight on the topics of: (1) the legal regulatory process at large; (2) how a data-driven and feedback-oriented sandbox provides an alternative regulatory process; (3) the legal hiring and recruiting process and (4) how AI allows law firms to consider alternative hiring metrics when assessing candidates …

Introduction To The 5th Annual Innovation And Technology Law Conference, Annette Clark

SITIE Symposiums

Seattle University School of Law’s then dean, now Dean Emerita, Annette Clark, opens the 5^th annual Innovation and Technology Law Conference, co-sponsored by the Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, and Innovation Law (SJTEIL) at Seattle University School of Law. Annette Clark has been involved with the planning and organization of the Innovation and Technology Law Conference since the conference’s inception. The theme of the 5^th annual 2022 conference is “deep innovation dives.”

Annette Clark explains that “This conference is part of our continuing efforts at Seattle [University] Law to expand educational opportunities for our students and community in …

5th Annual Innovation And Technology Law Conference: Deep Innovation Dives, Steven W. Bender

SITIE Symposiums

Steven W. Bender, Seattle University School of Law Professor and organizer of the SITIE Symposium series, details the history of the SITIE symposiums and the 2022 proceedings. He discusses how this year's symposium builds on themes and issues raised in previous symposiums and looks ahead to the 2023 SITIE symposium.

Suspect Development Systems: Databasing Marginality And Enforcing Discipline, Rashida Richardson, Amba Kak

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Algorithmic accountability law—focused on the regulation of data-driven systems like artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision-making (ADM) tools—is the subject of lively policy debates, heated advocacy, and mainstream media attention. Concerns have moved beyond data protection and individual due process to encompass a broader range of group-level harms such as discrimination and modes of democratic participation. While a welcome and long overdue shift, the current discourse ignores systems like databases, which are viewed as technically “rudimentary” and often siloed from regulatory scrutiny and public attention. Additionally, burgeoning regulatory proposals like algorithmic impact assessments are not structured to surface important –yet …

Regulating Personal Data Usage In Covid-19 Control Conditions, Mark Findlay, Nydia Remolina

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Concern has been widely expressed about the potential for COVID-19 control technologies and resultant data sharing negatively impacting on civil rights, invading personal privacy, undermining citizen dignity through expansive data matching and ultimately providing opportunities for data use well beyond the brief of virus mitigation. This chapter offers suggestions regarding effective and inclusive regulatory responses when faced with extended surveillance, tracking/tracing, public/private provider data sharing and any breakdown in personal data firewalls, or otherwise conventional aggregated data deviations and distortion. In doing so, the chapter explores personal data usage in the context of COVID-19 as a regulatory enterprise. It addresses …

Deprogramming Bias: Expanding The Exclusionary Rule To Pretextual Traffic Stop Using Data From Autonomous Vehicle And Drive-Assistance Technology, Joe Hillman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

As autonomous vehicles become more commonplace and roads become safer, this new technology provides an opportunity for courts to reconsider the constitutional rationale of modern search and seizure law. The Supreme Court should allow drivers to use evidence of police officer conduct relative to their vehicle’s technological capabilities to argue that a traffic stop was pretextual, meaning they were stopped for reasons other than their supposed violation. Additionally, the Court should expand the exclusionary rule to forbid the use of evidence extracted after a pretextual stop. The Court should retain some exceptions to the expanded exclusionary rule, such as when …

Should Data Drive Private Law?, Christoph Busch, Catalina Goanta, Katarzyna Kryla-Cudna, Monika Leszczynska, Vanessa Mak

Faculty Scholarship

This special issue tackles the question of whether and how data shapes private law. The development of new technologies enabled the generation, collection and processing of both personal and non-personal data on an unprecedented scale. The implications

of this phenomenon for private law are threefold. One, how does data affect our understanding of technology regulation in private law relationships? Two, how does data affect the way in which private law is applied? Three, what is the role of data in the design of law from a public policy perspective that transcends doctrinal considerations relating to private law?

The Reasonableness Standard Of Compliance In The Singapore Personal Data Protection Act, Warren B. Chik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The “reasonableness test” establishes the threshold of compliance and accountability under the Singapore Personal Data Protection Act. This “open-ended” test is flexible enough to take into account and react to changes in the scope and uses of personal data to maintain an equilibrium between the interest of individuals in the protection of their personal information on the one hand and the needs of organisations for access to, and the use of, such data on the other. This article seeks to provide a better understanding of how the test works by comparing it to the objective and function of the fair …

The Case For Banning (And Mandating) Ransomware Insurance, Kyle D. Logue, Adam B. Shniderman

Articles

Ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly pervasive and disruptive, resulting in ransom demands becoming more exorbitant. Payments for ransom costs are increasingly being covered by insurance, which may offer coverage for a variety of cyber-related losses. Some commentators have expressed concern over this market phenomenon. Specifically, the concern is that the presence of insurance is making the ransomware problem worse based on the following theory: because there is ransomware insurance that covers ransom payments, and because paying the ransom is often far cheaper than paying the restoration and business interruption costs covered under the policy, there is an increased tendency to …

Gauging The Acceptance Of Contact Tracing Technology: An Empirical Study Of Singapore Residents’ Concerns With Sharing Their Information And Willingness To Trust, Ee-Ing Ong, Wee Ling Loo

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments began implementing various forms of contact tracing technology. Singapore’s implementation of its contact tracing technology, TraceTogether, however, was met with significant concern by its population, with regard to privacy and data security. This concern did not fit with the general perception that Singaporeans have a high level of trust in its government. We explore this disconnect, using responses to our survey (conducted pre-COVID-19) in which we asked participants about their level of concern with the government and business collecting certain categories of personal data. The results show that respondents had less concern with …

Discrimination On Wheels: How Big Data Uses License Plate Surveillance To Put The Brakes On Disadvantaged Drivers, Nicole K. Mcconlogue

Law Faculty Scholarship

As scholarly discourse increasingly raises concerns about the negative societal effects of “fintech,” “dirty data,” and “technochauvinism,” a growing technology provides an instructive illustration of all three of these problems. Surveillance software companies are using automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology to develop predictive analytical tools. In turn, software companies market those tools to auto financers and insurers as a risk assessment input to evaluate consumers seeking to buy a car. Proponents of this technology might argue that more information about consumer travel habits will result in more accurate and individualized risk predictions, potentially increasing vehicle ownership among marginalized groups. …

Making Your Robotic Surgery Systems General Purpose: A Possible Preventive Measure For Induced And Contributory Infringement Liability Arising In Medical Procedures, Mengmeng Du

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Biometric Data Collection And Big Tech: Imposing Ethical Constraints On Entities That Harvest Biometric Data, Ian Ducey

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

Amazon can tell when you are sleeping, when you are awake, and when you are stressed, and they can do it before you may recognize it yourself. At least it will be able to if you decide to buy their newest wearable health monitoring technology. In 2020, Amazon joined Google’s Fitbit and Apple’s Apple Watch in the wearable technology market with the Amazon Halo. A wristband outfitted with a variety of sensors designed to help manage and record health identifiers, including body fat percentage, step tracking, sleep tracking, and now emotional responses. Many companies have begun developing and exploring the …

A New Antitrust Framework To Protect Mom And Pop From Big Tech, Cara Macdonald

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

While the economy declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, big technology companies like Amazon and Oracle experienced unprecedented growth and influence. Critics argue big technology companies are finding this level of success in-part due to anticompetitive practices. The crux of the debate rests on whether current, traditional antitrust laws are sufficient to cope with big technology companies. Some theorists argue that current laws are adequate, while others assert that antitrust laws are insufficient to regulate big technology companies because they are so different from the types of companies antitrust laws were designed to regulate. This article concludes that big tech companies …

Homography Of Inventorship: Dabus And Valuing Inventions, Jordana Goodman

Duke Law & Technology Review

On July 28, 2021, the Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience (“DABUS”) became the first computer to be recognized as a patent inventor. Due to the advocacy of DABUS’s inventor, Dr. Stephen Thaler, the world’s definition of “inventor” has finally fractured – dividing patent regimes between recognition of machine inventorship and lack thereof. This division has sparked many scholarly conversations about inventorship contribution, but none have discussed the implications of a homographic inventorship. This Article addresses the implications of international homographic inventorship – where countries have different notions and rules concerning patent inventorship – and the consequences for …

Protecting Video Game Gameplay Creators: A Two-Pronged Copyright Approach, Dakota D Foster

Texas A&M Law Review

The video game industry continues to grow into a behemoth, yet the players fueling its rise lack sufficient copyright protection. While the Copyright Act protects video games’ copyrightability as audiovisual works, it lacks clear protection for the gameplay created by gameplay content creators. These secondary creators increasingly build careers out of their gameplay yet lack clear copyright protection over the videos they create because the video game developer typically owns the video game’s exclusive rights over public performance and derivative works. The status quo relies on a “gentleman’s agreement” where video game copyright holders ignore their rights in the copyright …

Designing An Americans With Abilities Act: Consciousness, Capabilities, And Civil Rights, Laura C. Hoffman, Zachary E. Shapiro, Allison Rabkin Golden, Gregory E. Antill, Katherine Fang, Chaarushena Deb, Elizabeth Clarke, Alexis Kallen, Hanya M. Qureshi, Kai Shulman, Caroline V. Lawrence, Megan S. Wright, Joseph J. Fins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a seminal piece of legislation aimed at protecting those with disabilities from discrimination. The ADA, however, has not been consistently able to integrate people with disabilities successfully into society. With a specific focus on individuals with serious brain injuries, this Article aims to provide insight into the shortcomings of the ADA, specifically focusing on lackluster enforcement of the legislation and its failure to incorporate promising new technologies. These limitations of the ADA are made even more clear in light of the evolution occurring in the understanding of rights and capabilities. As such, the …

Up In Smoke: Why Regulating Social Media Like Big Tobacco Won’T Work (Yet!), Ian Mckay

Notre Dame Law Review

Lawmakers, pundits, and tech executives’ assertion that social media should be regulated like tobacco in order to protect American teenagers is oversimplistic. While the comparison makes for a good sound bite for the press, the argument disregards the inherent differences between regulating a physical product that has no constitutional protection and a virtual product that can implicate both users’ and social media companies’ First Amendment rights. This paper will identify and analyze some of the main pillars of the tobacco regulatory scheme and apply them to social media products. In Part I, I will define social media and provide a …

Preimplantation Genetic Testing: A Fundamental Right, Julianna S. Swann

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Unlike many European countries of similar economic, social, scientific, and political advancement, there is virtually no regulation of preimplantation genetic testing in the United States. This Note will explore preimplantation genetic testing and demonstrate that potential parents in the United States have a right to conduct said testing under the umbrella of the fundamental right to privacy. This Note will demonstrate the need for the regulation for preimplantation genetic testing that will comply with the Undue Burden Test set out in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, while acknowledging and supporting the fundamental right of potential parents to conduct testing. This …

From Negative To Positive Algorithm Rights, Cary Coglianese, Kat Hefter

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

We consider this issue here and suggest that the current calls for a negative right to be free from AI could very well transform over time into positive claims that demand the use of algorithmic tools by government officials. In Part I, we begin by sketching the current landscape surrounding the adoption of AI by government. That landscape is characterized by strong activist and scholarly voices expressing a pronounced aversion to the use of digital algorithms—and taking a decidedly negative rights tone. In Part II, we show that, although aversion to complex technology might be understandable, that aversion is neither …

Policing Police Tech: A Soft Law Solution, Farhang Heydari, Barry Friedman, Max Isaacs, Katie Kinsey

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Policing agencies are undergoing a rapid technological revolution. New products—with almost unfathomable capacities to collect, store, monitor, and transmit data about us—constantly are coming to market. In the hands of policing agencies, some of these products may promise real benefits to society. But too often these public safety benefits are unproven. And many of these products present real harms, including risks to privacy, freedom of speech, racial justice, and much more. Part of “public safety” is being safe from these harms as well.
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Lexglue: A Benchmark Dataset For Legal Language Understanding In English, Ilias Chalkidis, Abhik Jana, Dirk Hartung, Michael Bommarito, Ion Androutsopoulos, Daniel Katz, Nikolaos Aletras

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Lawsandtheirinterpretations, legal arguments and agreements are typically expressed in writing, leading to the production of vast corpora of legal text. Their analysis, which is at the center of legal practice, becomes increasingly elaborate as these collections grow in size. Natural language understanding (NLU) technologies can be a valuable tool to support legal practitioners in these endeavors. Their usefulness, however, largely depends on whether current state-of-the-art models can generalize across various tasks in the legal domain. To answer this currently open question, we introduce the Legal General Language Understanding Evaluation (LexGLUE) benchmark, a collection of datasets for evaluating model performance across …

Islamic Bioethics: National Regulations And Guidelines Of Human Stem Cell Research In The Muslim World, Azza Mahmoud

International Studies (MA) Theses

The utilization of human stem cells emerged recently in the Muslim world as one of the essential valuable areas of medicine for their vital role in developing regenerative medicine and treating chronic and incurable diseases. Existing studies indicate that most human stem cell researchers rely on varying schools of thought in Islamic law or on an individual base to define legitimate practices. From a policy perspective, the different Islamic religious decrees do not constitute a unified legal framework to promote essential international collaborations. The existing literature exhibits a limitation in comprehensive studies on human stem cell research (HSCR) in the …

The Future Of Ai Accountability In The Financial Markets, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher, Michelle M. Le

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Consumer interaction with the financial market ranges from applying for credit cards, to financing the purchase of a home, to buying and selling securities. And with each transaction, the lender, bank, and brokerage firm are likely utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) behind the scenes to augment their operations. While AI’s ability to process data at high speeds and in large quantities makes it an important tool for financial institutions, it is imperative to be attentive to the risks and limitations that accompany its use. In the context of financial markets, AI’s lack of decision-making transparency, often called the “black box problem,” …