Science and Technology Law Commons^™

The "Art" Of Future Life: Rethinking Personal Injury Law For The Negligent Deprivation Of A Patient's Right To Procreation In The Age Of Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Erika N. Auger

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Dna Really A Natural Product? It's Time To Separate Fact From (Legal) Fiction: An Examination Of Dna Patentability As A Biological Algorithm In The Post-Myriad Era, Nicholas Ulen

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In 2013, the United States Supreme Court delivered its landmark decision in Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., holding isolated DNA unpatentable, thereby invalidating the claims of thousands of DNA patents in the process. The opinion, delivered by Justice Thomas, reasoned that the act of separating DNA from the body did not sufficiently transform the molecule beyond what naturally exists. Yet the Court found that line to be crossed when it held certain artificially synthesized complementary DNA molecules coding for the exact same gene patentable. Unlike the Federal Circuit, the Court focused its analysis not on the ...

Access To Justice Through Technology: An Immigration Practitioner’S Perspective, Elizabeth Rieser-Murphy

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Can Technology Do To Increase Access To Justice?, Vanessa Butnick Davis

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Professions And Expertise: How Machine Learning And Blockchain Are Redesigning The Landscape Of Professional Knowledge And Organization, John Flood, Lachlan Robb

University of Miami Law Review

Machine learning has entered the world of the professions with differential impacts. Automation will have huge impacts on the nature of work and society. Engineering, architecture, and medicine are early and enthusiastic adopters of automation. Other professions, especially law, are late and, in some cases, reluctant adopters. This Article examines the effects of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and Blockchain on professions and their knowledge bases. We start by examining the nature of expertise in general and the function of expertise in law. Using examples from law, such as Gulati and Scott’s analysis of how lawyers create (or don’t create ...

Big Data Discrimination: Maintaining Protection Of Individual Privacy Without Disincentivizing Businesses’ Use Of Biometric Data To Enhance Security, Lauren Stewart

Boston College Law Review

Biometric identification technology is playing an increasingly significant role in the lives of consumers in the United States today. Despite the benefits of increased data security and ease of consumer access to businesses’ services, lack of widespread biometric data regulation creates the potential for commercial misuse. Of particular concern is the use of biometric data by businesses, such as those within the data broker industry, to enable opaque discrimination against consumers. Although some states, such as Illinois, Texas, and Washington, have adopted comprehensive biometric data regulation statutes, the statutes do not offer a consistent approach. This Note argues that Congress ...

Lowering Legal Barriers To Rpki Adoption, Christopher S. Yoo, David A. Wishnick

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Across the Internet, mistaken and malicious routing announcements impose significant costs on users and network operators. To make routing announcements more reliable and secure, Internet coordination bodies have encouraged network operators to adopt the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (“RPKI”) framework. Despite this encouragement, RPKI’s adoption rates are low, especially in North America.

This report presents the results of a year-long investigation into the hypothesis—widespread within the network operator community—that legal issues pose barriers to RPKI adoption and are one cause of the disparities between North America and other regions of the world. On the basis of interviews ...

Wildearth Guardians V. United States Bureau Of Land Management, Seth Sivinski

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In WildEarth Guardians v. U.S. BLM, the District Court of Colorado showed that economic and developmental uncertainty is an area where agencies are given broad discretion in deciding whether an impact is reasonably foreseeable and requires a further conformity analysis under the Clean Air Act. This case exemplifies the tactical limitation of using climate change and the science around it to force greater analysis of projects undertaken by federal agencies. However, the court presented a potential roadmap for successful future challenges.

Predictability For Privacy In Data Driven Government, Jordan Blanke, Janine Hiller

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Deepfakes: False Pornography Is Here And The Law Cannot Protect You, Douglas Harris

Duke Law & Technology Review

It is now possible for anyone with rudimentary computer skills to create a pornographic deepfake portraying an individual engaging in a sex act that never actually occurred. These realistic videos, called “deepfakes,” use artificial intelligence software to impose a person’s face onto another person’s body. While pornographic deepfakes were first created to produce videos of celebrities, they are now being generated to feature other nonconsenting individuals—like a friend or a classmate. This Article argues that several tort doctrines and recent non-consensual pornography laws are unable to handle published deepfakes of non-celebrities. Instead, a federal criminal statute prohibiting ...

Solenex Llc V. Jewell, F. Aaron Rains

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Solenex LLC v. Jewell, the Secretary of the Interior cancelled a highly contentious oil and gas lease in Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine area, an environmentally sensitive and culturally significant area to the Blackfeet Tribe, nearly thirty years after the lease had been issued. Solenex, a Louisiana based oil and gas company and holder of the lease, brought this action to enjoin the cancellation. The District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with Solenex and found that the Secretary’s decision took an unreasonable amount of time and violated good-faith contractual obligations. On these grounds, the court found the ...

Technology Transfer And The Trips Agreement Are Developed Countries Meeting Their End Of The Bargain?, David M. Fox

Hastings Science and Technology Law Journal

International trade agreements often integrate provisions requiring the transfer of technology from developed to least-developed countries under the assumption that technological development in the world’s poorest countries will help solve pressing global concerns. At first, supplying tangible hardware and equipment to least-developed countries satisfied these trade obligations. Today, however, modern development theory calls for a broader understanding of “technology” to include knowledge, skills, and human resource development. Article 66.2 of the TRIPS Agreement instructs developed country Members to incentivize domestic enterprises and institutions “for the purpose of promoting and encouraging technology transfer to least-developed country Members.” Least-developed countries ...

Why Do Startups Use Trade Secrets?, David S. Levine, Ted Sichelman

Notre Dame Law Review

Empirical studies of the use of trade secrecy are scant, and those focusing on startups, nonexistent. In this Article, we present the first set of data—drawn from the Berkeley Patent Survey—on the use of trade secrets by U.S. startup companies in the software, biotechnology, medical device, and hardware industries. Specifically, we report on the prevalence of trade secrecy usage among startups. Additionally, we assess the importance of trade secrets in relation to other forms of intellectual property protection and barriers to entry, such as patents, copyrights, firstmover advantage, and complementary assets. We segment these results by a ...

Finding Prejudice From Lost Esi: An Analysis Of Courts’ Standards Under Amended Federal Rule Of Civil Procedure 37(E), Thomas J. Joyce

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Digital Market Perfection, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Google’s, Apple’s, and other companies’ automated assistants are increasingly serving as personal shoppers. These digital intermediaries will save us time by purchasing grocery items, transferring bank accounts, and subscribing to cable. The literature has only begun to hint at the paradigm shift needed to navigate the legal risks and rewards of this coming era of automated commerce. This Article begins to fill that gap first by surveying legal battles related to contract exit, data access, and deception that will determine the extent to which automated assistants are able to help consumers to search and switch, potentially bringing tremendous ...

Defusing A Ticking Time Bomb: The Complicated Considerations Underlying Compulsory Human Genetic Editing, Grant Hayes Frazier

Hastings Science and Technology Law Journal

Gene editing is a type of genetic engineering that enables scientists to change an organism’s DNA by adding, removing, or altering genetic material at particular locations in the human genome. While these editing technologies are in their infancy, they hold great promise for future applications. They also raise many moral, ethical, and legal questions.

Fast forward 10 years. In utero gene editing is effective, safe, and inexpensive (or covered by insurance). A couple with strong religious views against gene editing decides to procreate despite knowing, via family history, they are both homozygous dominant for the allele that causes Huntington ...

Cryptocurrency And The § 1031 Like Kind Exchange, Eli Cole

Hastings Science and Technology Law Journal

Cryptocurrency has been called “a fraud” by some and “the next internet” by others. However, since the first Bitcoin was mined in 2009, the growth of the cryptocurrency market capitalization has been exponential—surpassing $800 billion at the beginning of 2018. Not surprisingly, the regulations governing these digital pieces of property have lagged the economic growth. In this Article, I attempt to answer the question: should 26 U.S.C. § 1031 apply to an exchange between cryptocurrencies?

This Article argues that the Internal Revenue Service’s decision to classify cryptocurrency as property, combined with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ...

Massachusetts Lobstermen’S Association V. Ross, Daniel Brister

Public Land & Resources Law Review

President Obama established the first––and only––national monument in the Atlantic Ocean on September 15, 2016. Located 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and comprised of 4,913 square miles of marine ecosystems rich in biodiversity, the protected area includes four underwater mountains and three submarine canyons. Plaintiff commercial lobster and fishing associations, seeking to overturn the designation, asserted that the Antiquities Act does not permit a president to establish marine national monuments. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed, upholding a president’s authority to protect offshore areas and vast ecosystems as objects ...

Tc Heartland: It’S Time To Take Stock, Daniel Kazhdan, Sanjiv P. Laud

IP Theory

It has been a little over a year and a half since the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking venue decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, shaking up the status quo in U.S. patent infringement litigation. The first months after TC Heartland saw a flurry of activity as litigants and courts wrestled with the impact of the decision on pending cases, pondered the true meaning of a “regular and established place of business,” and explored many other questions left by the TC Heartland decision. Eighteen months and several writs of mandamus later, it is now ...

Should Robots Prosecute And Defend?, Stephen E. Henderson

Stephen E Henderson