Computer Law Commons^™

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Social Media’S Death Toll: Who Should Be Held Liable?, Sara Fradi

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

No abstract provided.

The Double-Edged Sword Of Ai In Elections: Navigating Risks And Opportunities In Washington State, Payvand Khastkhodaei

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

No abstract provided.

Deepfake Danger: The Urgent Need For Federal Protections Against Ai-Generated Pornography, Benjamin Comfort

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

No abstract provided.

No Patent Attorney In Their Right Mind: How Jepson Claims Clarify Subject Matter Eligibility Post-Mayo, Jared M. Brown

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Patent practitioners have gradually shelved Jepson claims for four decades. In those four decades, Supreme Court patent subject matter eligibility jurisprudence has taken a roller-coaster ride from an ancient point-of-novelty approach through the days of Diamond v. Diehr and back to a modernized arguably point-of-novelty-focused approach again in Mayo and Alice. In the absence of congressional action, the Federal Circuit has been left to deal with the aftermath. The inventive landscape—particularly with regard to biotech and software—is shifting fast, and our patent scheme is struggling to keep up.

In the case of software inventions, the Federal Circuit has largely …

The Privacy Law Jigsaw: Piecing Together Legal Compliance When Pieces Don’T Fit, Roy Wyman, Wesley Mcculloch

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Over the past six years the United States has shifted from a relatively stable and laissez-faire privacy regime, anchored by a few, sector-specific federal statutes such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, to an increasingly fragmented landscape dominated by numerous state-level consumer privacy laws. While these laws share commonalities, they also vary in important ways. This Article analyzes that patchwork legal regime and its impact on businesses through four points of friction: (i) statutory applicability and thresholds; (ii) notice-and-choice requirements; (iii) individual data-management rights; and (iv) controller–processor contracting obligations. This Article further explores how modern service-delivery models, especially …

Reconceiving Safety Regulation For Ai And Ml Medical Software, Barbara J. Evans, Eric S. Rosenthal, Azra Bihorac

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This article explores the challenges of regulating AI and ML clinical decision support tools intended to assist trained health care professionals in delivering clinical care. Two old, twentieth-century regulatory models have dominated discussions of medical AI policy since 2013. Thinking inside these old regulatory boxes has not produced effective regulatory solutions to address the novel risks AI poses in clinical care. The first regulatory box treats software as a medical device, which tasks medical device regulators with making software safe but neglects the crucial roles physicians, nurses, administrators, medical practice regulators, and other health oversight bodies must also play to …

Cybersecurity Risk Shifting, Deborah R. Farringer

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The Change Healthcare cyberattack of 2024 paralyzed the health care system for months, creating an exceedingly far reaching and devastating impact on providers, suppliers, and patients across the country. While the scope of the attack was unprecedented, the cyberattack itself was not new, unique, or isolated. Indeed, this attack came just months after the close of a year in which the United States’ Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recorded the highest number of reported breaches of protected health information and the highest number of breached records. With a medical record fetching nearly four times …

Editorial

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

No abstract provided.

Death Of Substantiality: Why The Legal System Should Rethink The Application And Weight Of This Fair-Use Factor In The Context Of Social Media, Lindsey Vickers

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The fair use test for exemption for liability from copyright infringement was codified in the 1970s and has not been updated since—despite major technological changes in the interim. While three of the test’s four prongs are still useful when applied to short-form media that now dominates worldwide media consumption, the factor that considers the substantiality of the portion used relative to the total work is obsolete. The current dysfunctionality of this prong in social media settings is not the only reason it should be reassessed by courts and Congress. The prong and its analysis are a bit of a Frankenstein. …