Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Privacy Nicks: How The Law Normalizes Surveillance, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger, Johanna Gunawan

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy law is failing to protect individuals from being watched and exposed, despite stronger surveillance and data protection rules. The problem is that our rules look to social norms to set thresholds for privacy violations, but people can get used to being observed. In this article, we argue that by ignoring de minimis privacy encroachments, the law is complicit in normalizing surveillance. Privacy law helps acclimate people to being watched by ignoring smaller, more frequent, and more mundane privacy diminutions. We call these reductions “privacy nicks,” like the proverbial “thousand cuts” that lead to death.

Privacy nicks come from the …

Ctr. For Biological Diversity V. United States Fish & Wildlife Serv., Ali Stapleton

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court of Arizona’s decision to deny a proposed mining plan becuase the operations exceeded the boundaries of a valid mining claim. The issue the court addressed is whether a permanent occupancy of waste rock and tailings on land, absent the discovery of valuable minerals, is a reasonable use related to mining activities. The Ninth Circuit decision effectively prevented mining companies from amending the 1872 Mining Law on the administrative record. Motions for a rehearing and a rehearing en banc were denied.

Waking Sleeping Beauty? Exploring The Challenges Of Cyber-Deterrence By Punishment, Thibault Moulin

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Hacking Or Hatching The Skinny Label: How The Federal Circuit’S Decision In Gsk V. Teva Threatens Generics And Induced Infringement, Kayla Mccallum

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Note focuses on the recent precedential decision handed down by the Federal Circuit in GlaxoSmithKline LLC v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., which impacts “one of the greatest public health inventions of the 21st century”: generic drugs. An invention that rose to prominence when former President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Hatch-Waxman Act (“the Act”), formally known as the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984. The Act aimed to increase competition between brand-name and generic manufacturers while balancing two seemingly opposing interests: (1) encourage and reward innovation by pioneer drug companies and (2) increase access …

The Power Of Local: Nearby Innovators Dominate Patented Technology Development, Richard Gruner

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

Advances by nearby innovators – close enough to interact in person – play key roles in patented technology development. Patents frequently cite nearby innovations, identifying these local innovations as the background for further patented inventions. Such citations reveal narrow geographic areas with intensely active innovation communities advancing similar projects and technologies. Local innovators – working within a commutable distance of 40 miles or less of each other – accounted for 25 percent of all patent citations between 2010 and 2019 and about 21 percent of citations by disinterested patent examiners reviewing patent applications. These percentages of citations to local advances …

Privacy And Property: Constitutional Concerns Of Dna Dragnet Testing, E. Wyatt Jones

Honors Projects

DNA dragnets have attracted both public and scholarly criticisms that have yet to be resolved by the Courts. This review will introduce a modern understanding of DNA analysis, a complete introduction to past and present Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, and existing suggestions concerning similar issues in legal scholarship. Considering these contexts, this review concludes that a focus on privacy and property at once, with a particular sensitivity to the inseverable relationship between the two interests, is Constitutionally consistent with precedent and the most workable means of answering the question at hand.

Jurisgenerative Tissues: Sociotechnical Imaginaries And The Legal Secretions Of 3d Bioprinting, Roxanne Mykitiuk, Joshua Shaw

Articles & Book Chapters

Three-dimensional ‘bioprinting’ is under development, which may produce living human organs and tissues to be surgically implanted in patients. Like tissue engineering and regenerative medicine generally, the process of bioprinting potentially disrupts experience of the human body by redefining understandings of, and becoming actualised in new practices and regimes in relation to, the body. The authors consider how these novel sociotechnical imaginaries may emerge, having regard to law’s contribution to, as well as its possible transformation by, the process of 3D bioprinting. The authors draw on Gilbert Simondon and corporeal, material feminists to account for these disruptions as ‘ontogenetic,’ in …

Exams In The Time Of Chatgpt, Margaret Ryznar

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Invaluable guidance has emerged regarding online teaching in recent years, but less so concerning online and take-home final exams. This article offers various methods to administer such exams while maintaining their integrity—after asking artificial intelligence writing tool ChatGPT for its views on the matter. The sophisticated response of the chatbot, which students can use in their written work, only raises the stakes of figuring out how to administer exams fairly.

Was The Colonial Cyberattack The First Act Of Cyberwar Against The U.S.? Finding The Threshold Of War For Ransomware Attacks, Liam P. Bradley

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

On May 7, 2021, “DarkSide,” a foreign hacker group, conducted a ransomware attack against the Colonial Pipeline (“Colonial”). That morning, Colonial discovered a “ransom note demanding cryptocurrency.” The attack forced the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, stopping the daily delivery of 2.5 million barrels (MMBbls) of “gasoline, jet fuel and diesel” to the East Coast. The shutdown created fuel shortages, impacted financial markets, and panicked the public. The resulting fuel shortages and economic impacts “triggered a comprehensive federal response” on May 11, 2021. On May 12, CEO Joseph Blount paid a ransom of nearly $5 million in bitcoin to …

Federal Protection Of Illegal Short-Term Rentals: How The Protecting Local Authority And Neighborhoods Act Will Hold Airbnb Liable, Enforcing Local Regulations, Nicole Schaeffer

Catholic University Law Review

Section 230 has come under scrutiny from academics and politicians, leading to calls on lawmakers to limit, or even end, Section 230’s immunity for Internet corporations; however, less attention has been given to the effects of Section 230 on the legal landscape in local, off-line communities. Online providers of short-term rental (STR) services such as Airbnb have used Section 230’s protection to shift the burden of complying with local laws and lease agreements onto the users listing STRs. By wielding Section 230 as both a sword and shield in litigation over their listings that violate local laws and lease agreements, …

The Constitution Commandeth: Thou Shalt Not Protect The Same Subject Matter Under Design Patent And Trade Dress Laws, Kenneth B. Germain, Louis H. Sitler

IP Theory

For many years and still currently, it has been assumed—and even expressly asserted—that it is perfectly permissible to “stack” various legal theories (concurrently or consecutively) to protect nonfunctional “designs” for products. This is despite infrequent but cogent arguments that the available theories, notably design patents and product design trade dress—both of which are based upon federal statutes—are not Constitutionally compatible due to at least the concept of Superfluity. The authors of this article carefully examine the origin, nature, and meaning of these two types of IP protections in the context of their two Constitutional bases—the Patent/Copyright Clause and the Commerce …

Freedom Of Algorithmic Expression, Inyoung Cheong

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Can content moderation on social media be considered a form of speech? If so, would government regulation of content moderation violate the First Amendment? These are the main arguments of social media companies after Florida and Texas legislators attempted to restrict social media platforms’ authority to de-platform objectionable content.

This article examines whether social media companies’ arguments have valid legal grounds. To this end, the article proposes three elements to determine that algorithms classify as “speech:” (1) the algorithms are designed to communicate messages; (2) the relevant messages reflect cognitive or emotive ideas beyond mere operational matters; and (3) they …

The Return Of Public Goods: Introduction To A Symposium, Dr. Charles J. Reid, Jr.

University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Ethical Principles In Ai Startups, James Bessen, Stephen Michael Impink, Robert Seamans

Faculty Scholarship

Do high-tech startups benefit from developing more ethical AI? AI startups implement policies and take actions to manage ethical issues associated with data collection, storage, and usage and adapt to the norms of their industry. This paper describes these startups' ethics-related actions, including ethical AI policy adoption, and examines how these actions relate to startup performance. We find that merely adopting an ethical AI policy (i.e., a less costly signal) does not relate to increased performance. However, there is evidence that investors reward startups that take more costly preventative pro-ethics actions, like seeking expert guidance, training employees about unconscious bias, …

A Hot Spit-Take: Why The Supreme Court Will Hold That There Is No Privacy Interest In Commercial Dna Data, Mounir Jamal

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Indian Pharmaceutical Patenting Under Section 3(D): A Model For Developing Countries, Nicholas Eitsert

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (March 2023): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Cftc & Sec: The Wild West Of Cryptocurrency Regulation, Taylor Anne Moffett

University of Richmond Law Review

Over the past few years, a turf war has been brewing between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) over which agency should regulate cryptocurrencies. Both agencies have pursued numerous enforcement actions over the cryptocurrencies they believe to be within their jurisdiction. This turf war has many moving components, but the focus always comes back to one question: which cryptocurrencies are commodities, and which cryptocurrencies are securities? The distinction is important because the CFTC has statutory authority to regulate commodities, whereas the SEC has statutory authority to regulate securities. This Comment rejects the pursuit …

Standing Up To Hackers: Article Iii Standing For Victims Of Data Breaches, Kendall Coffey

University of Miami Law Review

Despite the increasing amount of data breaches, there is no liability for parties who do not adequately protect victim’s information. In federal court, plaintiffs must show that their injury was concrete, particularized, and imminent. But, when plaintiffs’ information has been stolen, but not yet criminally used, they may be unable to establish a right to relief. Victims face challenges when seeking damage for this future harm, because despite their destroyed privacy, they may not have evidence of a perpetrator’s actual misuse of purloined data. This Article analyzes multiple court decisions, generally in the setting of class-actions, and discusses outcomes of …

The Microsoft Litigation’S Lessons For United States V. Google, John E. Lopatka, William H. Page

University of Miami Law Review

The United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and three overlapping groups of states have filed federal antitrust cases alleging Google has monopolized internet search, search advertising, internet advertising technologies, and app distribution on Android phones. In this Article, we focus on the DOJ’s claims that Google has used contracts with tech firms that distribute Google’s search services in order to exclude rival search providers and thus to monopolize the markets for search and search advertising—the two sides of Google’s search platform. The primary mechanisms of exclusion, according to the DOJ, are the many contracts Google has used to secure its …