Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Carpenter, The Fourth Amendment, And Third-Party Workarounds, Jillian Chambers

Connecticut Law Review

The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision, Carpenter v. United States, seemed to signal a shift in the Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to acknowledge and adapt to developments in technology. It was a hollow victory. Per Carpenter, if a telecommunications company collected and held your cell phone location data, and law enforcement asked for it, they would need a warrant. But if the location data was repackaged and sold to another company or data broker, and then law enforcement bought the data: no warrant necessary. Why is one exchange of cell phone location data subject to stringent warrant requirements while the other …

2021 Biennial Report

Tech Policy Lab

The Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington has become a leading source for tech policy research and education and an indispensable resource to local, national, and international policymakers. In its seven-year history, the Lab has built a strong network and increased credibility that allows us to work directly with policymakers, publish research and guides on emerging technologies, and provide opportunities for the public to learn from experts. The last two years found not only our state, but our nation and the world in a time of great uncertainty. American society strives to reconcile centuries of racial and other …

Federalism In The Algorithmic Age, Chad Squitieri

Scholarly Articles

The robots will not be pleased with Frank Pasquale. In New Laws of Robotics, the Brooklyn Law professor outlines two possible futures that can emerge from a growing conflict between human and robotic thought. The first is a future of robotic dominance. In that future, decisions traditionally made by human professionals (e.g., who goes to jail, what medicines are prescribed, and what news gets published) are decided by robots powered by artificially intelligent algorithms. The second future offers robots a less-favored role in the ordering of human affairs. Pasquale earns the displeasure of our would-be robotic overlords by outlining the …

The Integration Of Artificial Intelligence In The Intelligence Community: Necessary Steps To Scale Efforts And Speed Progress, Corin R. Stone

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Future Of The Agricultural Industry – Is Blockchain A New Beginning?, Ryan Bisel

Seattle University Law Review

As we advance into a digital era, we begin to depend on technological innovations to rapidly help develop and update processes and methods within different industries. Blockchain technology—popularized by cryptocurrency—is slowly making its debut in the agricultural supply chain. Implementing a blockchain requirement for suppliers would be beneficial because it would allow agricultural suppliers and distributors to track their products in a more efficient manner. However, there are four potential legal issues that are foreseeable: (1) preemption, (2) overlapping regulatory authority, (3) applying current legal rules to new technology, and (4) contracting. This Note will specifically focus on issues of …

A Monopoly Of Thought—How Growing Anticompetitive Practices On The Internet Affect Creative Work, Laurel Brown

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will address how dominant Internet companies detrimentally impact creative work and how legal solutions might be employed to combat the damage inflicted by online monopolies. Part I will focus on how certain Internet companies became dominant, showing an evolution from egalitarian ideals to the consolidated control of the World Wide Web (the web) by companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. In Part II, this Note will focus on how two particular companies—Google and Facebook—affect creative endeavors in their control of access to audiences and by determining the economics of content production on the Internet. Part III details what …

Clearing Opacity Through Machine Learning, Arti K. Rai, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence and machine learning represent powerful tools in many fields, ranging from criminal justice to human biology to climate change. Part of the power of these tools arises from their ability to make predictions and glean useful information about complex real-world systems without the need to understand the workings of those systems.

But these machine-learning tools are often as opaque as the underlying systems, whether because they are complex, nonintuitive, deliberately kept secret, or a synergistic combination of those three factors. A burgeoning literature addresses challenges arising from the opacity of machine-learning systems. This literature has largely focused on …

Tangibility As Technology, João Marinotti

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Property law has traditionally relied on tangible boundaries to delineate legal thinghood and to inform the bounds of in rem rights and duties. Unfortunately, property doctrines have fossilized around tangibility, causing fragmentation in the legal treatment of digital assets. In the United States, for example, cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) may simultaneously be classified as commodities, securities, currencies, assets, or not property at all, depending on the jurisdiction, domain, or specific asset in question. This fragmented system of overlapping legal treatments increases the information cost of using digital assets, decreases efficiency, and ultimately hinders future innovation.

In this Article, I …

Health Ai For Good Rather Than Evil? The Need For A New Regulatory Framework For Ai-Based Medical Devices, Sara Gerke

Faculty Scholarly Works

Artificial intelligence (AI), especially its subset machine learning, has tremendous potential to improve health care. However, health AI also raises new regulatory challenges. In this Article, I argue that there is a need for a new regulatory framework for AI-based medical devices in the U.S. that ensures that such devices are reasonably safe and effective when placed on the market and will remain so throughout their life cycle. I advocate for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and congressional actions. I focus on how the FDA could - with additional statutory authority - regulate AI-based medical devices. I show that …

Institution Denied: The Evolution Of Discretionary Denials Of Inter Partes Review Under 35 U.S.C. § 314(A) Since Apple Inc. V. Fintiv, Inc., Kelly A. Welsh

American University Law Review

The Leahy-Smith American Invents Act (AIA), passed by Congress in 2011, dramatically altered the landscape of patent litigation through the creation of new administrative post-grant proceedings for adjudicating patent validity disputes. One of these administrative proceedings, inter partes review (IPR), has proved immensely popular and polarizing. IPR proceedings have invalidated huge swaths of patents, making the decision whether to institute an IPR significant. The current uncertainty regarding whether an IPR proceeding will be instituted, or whether the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) will exercise its newfound expanded discretionary denial authority, continues to frustrate both petitioners and patent …

Put More Women In Charge And Other Leadership Lessons From Covid-19, Peter H. Huang

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Persuasion About/Without International Law: The Case Of Cybersecurity Norms, Steven R. Ratner

Book Chapters

International law on cybersecurity is characterized by at best a thin consensus on the existence of rules, their meaning, and the desirability and content of new rules. This legal landscape results in a unique pattern of argumentation and persuasion by states and non-state actors both in advocating for a regulatory scheme for cyber activity and in reacting to malicious cyber acts. By examining argumentation in the absence of a generally agreed legal framework, this chapter seeks to provide new insights into the motivations for and effects of international legal argumentation in shaping debates and behavior. After describing the legal landscape …

Masthead, Case Western Reserve Journal Of Law, Technology & The Internet

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Smart Cars, Telematics And Repair, Leah Chan Grinvald, Ofer Tur-Sinai

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Recent years have seen a surge in the use of automotive telematics. Telematics is the integration of telecommunications and informatics technologies. Using telematics in cars enables transmission of data communications between the car and other systems or devices. This opens up a wide range of possibilities, including the prospect of conducting remote diagnostics based on real-time access to the vehicle. Yet, as with any new technology, alongside its potential benefits, the use of automotive telematics could also have potential downsides. This Article explores the significant negative impact that the growing reliance on telematics systems could have on competition in the …

Brain Machine Interfaces And Ethics: A Transition From Wearable To Implantable, Lydia Montalbano

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Artificial Intelligence & Algorithmic Bias: The Issues With Technology Reflecting History & Humans, Maya C. Jackson

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

A Unified Theory Of Code Connected Contracts, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Smart contracts and their promise of automatic performance capture legal and entrepreneurial imaginations. But the excitement around the technology led to some confusing legal responses. Several legal scholars use chronology to help reduce the confusion and place smart contracts within what is already familiar about computational contracting. According to this line of thinking, blockchain-based smart contracts simply represent the next technological advancement in a long history of computable contracting technologies. However, other scholarly work suggests that such a chronological explanation under-simplifies the nature of the linkages between smart contracts and other forms of code-connected contracts. This Article offers a unified …

Autonomous Business Reality, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Society tends to expect technology to do more than it can actually achieve, at a faster pace than it can actually move. The resulting hype cycle infects all forms of discourse around technology. Unfortunately, the discourse on law and technology is no exception to this rule. The resulting discussion is often characterized by two or more positions at opposite ends of the spectrum, such that participants in the discussion speak past each other, rather than to each other. The rich context that sits in the middle ground goes disregarded altogether. This dynamic most recently surfaced in the legal literature regarding …

Masthead, Editor-In- Chief

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Brain-Computer-Interfacing & Respondeat Superior: Algorithmic Decisions, Manipulation, And Accountability In Armed Conflict, Salahudin Ali

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This article examines the impact that brain-computer-interfacing platforms will have on the international law of armed conflict’s respondeat superior legal regime. Major Ali argues that the connection between the human brain and this nascent technology’s underlying technology of artificial intelligence and machine learning will serve as a disruptor to the traditional mental prerequisites required to impart culpability and liability on commanders for actions of their troops. Anticipating that BCI will become increasingly ubiquitous, Major Ali’s article offers frameworks for solution to BCI’s disruptive potential to the internal law of armed conflict.