Science and Technology Law Commons^™

From Tragedy To Triumph In The Pursuit Of Looted Art: Altmann, Benningson, Portrait Of Wally, Von Saher And Their Progeny, 15 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 394 (2016), Donald Burris

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

This article is a broad and approachable overview of American law regarding the potential repatriation of Nazi-looted art—an area which the author and his now-retired partner, Randy Schoenberg, helped develop from the ground up starting with the development of the Altmann case, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, and continuing on through a number of fascinating looted-art cases of a more recent vintage. Parts of the article read as much like a detective story as a summary of cases and Mr. Burris has been kind enough to share both his approach to these cases and his prognosis for …

Cultural Heritage & New Media: A Future For The Past, 15 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 604 (2016), Ann Marie Sullivan

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

The application of new media to cultural heritage is consistent with the policy objectives that the copyright law of the United States stands to promote. However, the practical application of the law currently hinders these objectives, often stifling the creation and dissemination of new media works of cultural heritage. In this context, copyright law presents a problem and not a solution, a barrier and not a protection, dissuasion of creation and not encouragement and incentive. Defining the legal scope and reach of digital property and new media within the realm of art and cultural heritage law is critical for the …

Data Privacy And Inmate Recidivism, Chad Squitieri

Scholarly Articles

Private companies are awarded contracts to provide Internet technologies within jails and prisons. These correctional contractors often argue that their services can reduce recidivism rates by, for example, providing inmates with access to video messaging services where inmates can communicate with loved ones who are otherwise unable to travel to communicate in person. A close examination of the privacy policies offered by correctional contractors, however, reveals how efforts to reduce recidivism rates are undermined.

As this Essay will explain, correctional contractors collect sensitive data about inmates and the loved ones with whom they communicate. If this data is stolen or …

Applying The Law Of Neutrality While Transitioning The Seas Of Cyberspace, Danielle Higson

American University National Security Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Star Wars: The Battle To Protect The Rights Of Publicity Of America’S Astronauts, Robert C. O’Brien

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

This article examines the efforts by astronauts to establish and protect their publicity rights. Part I summarizes the development of the right of publicity generally.

Part II discusses the development of that right within California jurisprudence. Part III analyzes the arguments offered against astronauts who have been compelled to protect their publicity rights in court. Finally, Part IV addresses practical concerns arising from the prospect of facing off against an astronaut (or his or her estate) before a jury. This article concludes that an astronaut generally will be able to successfully invoke right-of-publicity laws against companies that use the astronaut’s …

Anda Reverse Payments And The Post-Actavis Landscape, Michele M. Kang

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Pharmaceutical companies spend much of their time and resources in conducting clinical trials for developing new drugs. Under the Hatch- Waxman Act, generic drugs can refer to the same clinical trials that the initial pharmaceutical companies have done, if they prove similarities in the biological makeup of both drugs. A trend that has developed in response to the Hatch- Waxman Act is that pharmaceutical companies have been paying off generic companies not to enter into their market — this is referred to as a reverse payment patent settlement. While proving to be beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry, reverse payments create …

Spotting Software Innovation In A Patent Assertion Entity World, Garry A. Gabison

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

This paper looks at the relationship between venture capital (VC) funds and patent assertion entities (PAEs). These two types of entities rely heavily on patents most particularly in the software industry. The paper analyzes this relationship and argues that VC funds have fed into the PAE phenomenon. This paper also argues that PAEs have impacted how VCs behave. It offers an empirical analysis and finds that as PAEs became more active, VCs provided more funds to the companies they backed. This paper closes by discussing what VCs have done and could do to address PAEs and their activities.

The Implications Of Creating An Iphone Backdoor, Gregory Coutros

American University National Security Law Brief

No abstract provided.

The Intersection Of "Internet Terrorism" And "Individual Privacy" In The Context Of The First Amendment, Amanda Leonard

American University National Security Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Technological Neutrality: Recalibrating Copyright In The Information Age, Carys Craig

Articles & Book Chapters

This article aims to draw the connection between how we conceptualize legal rights over information resources and our capacity to develop technologically neutral legal norms in the information age. More specifically, it identifies and critically examines three competing approaches to the idea of technological neutrality apparent in copyright jurisprudence. Ultimately, it is argued that true technological neutrality requires not simply the seamless expansion of legal rights into new technological contexts, but the careful, contextual recalibration of rights and interests in light of shifting values and changing circumstances. As a normative principle, technological neutrality in copyright law thus demands a nuanced …

Before Mayo & After Alice: The Changing Concept Of Abstract Ideas, Magnus Gan

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Mayo v. Prometheus and Alice v. CLS are landmark Supreme Court decisions which respectively introduced and then instituted a new, two-step patent-eligibility test. Step One tests the patent claims for abstractness, while Step Two tests for inventive application. This new test was so demanding that in the one-year period after Alice was decided, over 80 percent of all challenged patents had one or more claims invalidated. In fact, at the Federal Circuit over the same time period, only one recorded case of a successful Alice defense exists—DDR Holdings v. Hotels.com. This note explains DDR’s success as an inconsistency …

Privacy And Accountability In Black-Box Medicine, Roger Allan Ford, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Black-box medicine—the use of big data and sophisticated machine-learning techniques for health-care applications—could be the future of personalized medicine. Black-box medicine promises to make it easier to diagnose rare diseases and conditions, identify the most promising treatments, and allocate scarce resources among different patients. But to succeed, it must overcome two separate, but related, problems: patient privacy and algorithmic accountability. Privacy is a problem because researchers need access to huge amounts of patient health information to generate useful medical predictions. And accountability is a problem because black-box algorithms must be verified by outsiders to ensure they are accurate and unbiased, …

Valuing Spectrum Allocations, Thomas W. Hazlett, Michael Honig

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Observing trends in which Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have become widely popular, some argue that unlicensed allocations hosting such wireless technologies are increasingly valuable and that administrative spectrum allocations should shift accordingly. We challenge that policy conclusion. A core issue is that the social value of a given spectrum allocation is widely assumed to equal the gains of the applications it is likely to host. This thinking is faulty, as vividly seen in what we deem the Broadcast TV Spectrum Valuation Fallacy – the idea that because wireless video, or broadcast network programs are popular, TV channels are efficiently defined. This …

Virtual Violence - Disruptive Cyberspace Operations As "Attacks" Under International Humanitarian Law, Ido Kilovaty

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Power outages, manipulations of data, and interruptions of Internet access are all possible effects of cyber operations. Unfortunately, recent efforts to address and regulate cyberspace operations under international law often emphasize the uncommon, though severe, cyber-attacks that cause deaths, injuries, or physical destruction. This paper deals with cyber operations during armed conflicts that cause major disruption or interruption effects – as opposed to deaths, injuries, or physical destruction. The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of these cyber operations that cause major disruption or interruption effects, and to argue that they might still constitute “acts of violence,” …

Online Consent And The On-Demand Economy: An Approach For The Millennial Circumstance, Jessica L. Hubley

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

The on-demand economy emerged over the last decade as a new commercial model facilitated by the laws of online contracts. This article focuses on four specific categories of web-based services with common characteristics: (1) Marketplaces, (2) Contractor Marketplaces, (3) Gig Platforms, and (4) Service Platforms. Categorizing on-demand companies in this way highlights how the law is lagging behind technology in a near-calamitous fashion; existing classification rules address a black and white dichotomy (employee vs. contractor) where these marketplace realities warrant a more nuanced approach. This article discusses how traditional rules surrounding worker classification provide, or fail to provide, clear guidance …

The Mayo Framework Is Bad For Your Health, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

This Article begins by providing a brief historical retrospective of the development of the patent eligibility doctrine, and then delves into the related questions of: (1) what are the Supreme Court’s policy objectives for the recent reinvigoration of the patent eligibility doctrine; and (2) has it achieved those objectives? The article then discusses three important out-standing questions regarding the application of the new test for patent eligibility: (1) what constitutes a natural phenomenon; (2) what constitutes an inventive step; and (3) what, if any, role does preemption play in the analysis? The article then provides four examples of recent lower …

Alice: The Status Quo Or Total Chaos?, Matthew Moldovanyi

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

"On June 19, 2014 the Supreme Court handed down a highly important opinion discussing what is considered patentable subject matter in the United States. The case, Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank International, involved a group of patents for computer software that mitigated settlement risk in financial transactions. The Court held that these patents were not drawn to patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 (2012) because the claims were directed toward abstract ideas, which are unpatentable." "This ruling has drawn decidedly mixed reactions from commentators in the legal field. Moreover, this case leaves United States Patent and Trademark …

Face-To-Face With Facial Recognition Evidence: Admissibility Under The Post-Crawford Confrontation Clause, Joseph Clarke Celentino

Michigan Law Review

In Crawford v. Washington, the Supreme Court announced a major change in Confrontation Clause doctrine, abandoning a decades-old framework that focused on the common law principles of hearsay analysis: necessity and reliability. The new doctrine, grounded in an originalist interpretation of the Sixth Amendment, requires courts to determine whether a particular statement is testimonial. But the Court has struggled to present a coherent definition of the term testimonial. In its subsequent decisions, the Court illustrated that its new Confrontation Clause doctrine could be used to bar forensic evidence, including laboratory test results, if the government failed to produce the …

Update On Antitrust And The Legal Issues Surrounding Cloning In The Equine World, Lewis T. Stevens

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

Sampling And Reliability In Class Action Litigation, Hillel J. Bavli

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

In this Article, I explain my conclusions in Aggregating for Accuracy in non-mathematical terms, and underscore certain implications with respect to class action litigation and considerations in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo. I begin by describing the building blocks of my analysis—the concepts of reliability and accuracy in the law.