Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Shadow Dwellers: The Underregulated World Of State And Local Dna Databases, Stephen Mercer, Jessica D. Gabel

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Disclosing Big Data, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article reveals that the law is failing to adequately encourage producers of “big data” to disclose their most innovative work to the public. “Big data” refers to a new industrial and scientific phenomenon that holds the potential to transform diverse industries—from medicine, to energy, to online services. At the heart of this phenomenon are innovative and complex practices by which experts shape featureless digital records into valuable information products. The fact that these big data practices are unlikely to be widely disclosed to the public is worrisome for familiar reasons: the law generally prefers to induce technological disclosure in …

Virtual Designs, Mark D. Janis, Jason J. Du Mont

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Industrial design is migrating to the virtual world, and the design patent system is migrating with it. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has already granted several thousand design patents on virtual designs, patents that cover the designs of graphical user interfaces for smartphones, tablets, and other products, as well as the designs of icons or other artifacts of various virtual environments. Many more such design patent applications are pending; in fact, U.S. design patent applications for virtual designs represent one of the fastest growing forms of design subject matter at the USPTO.

Our project is the first comprehensive …

Power And Governance In Patent Pools, Michael Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The recent influx of patent pools, research consortia, and similar cooperative groups led by companies at the vanguard of American innovation has raised a pressing question: How does collective action influence the incentive to innovate? This question hinges on how patent pools are internally governed — a topic that has not been deeply examined by legal scholars. Through an original study of fifty-two private agreements, this Article pulls back the veil on patent licensing collectives to examine whether such organizations are designed to encourage long-term innovation.

This study draws on collective patent license agreements spanning the years 1856 to 2013 …

Book Review: Juries In The 21st Century, By Jacqueline Horan, Vanessa Macdonnell

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In Juries in the 21st Century, Jacqueline Horan immerses the reader in a discussion of how jury trials operate, how they could be more effective, and how they should adapt to emerging technologies. The book makes three contributions to the existing legal literature. First, it challenges basic assumptions about how juries operate. Horan demonstrates that not all features of modern jury trials are essential or even useful. She argues convincingly that the existing features of the jury system should only be retained if they contribute positively to the process by which the jury arrives at a verdict. This leads Horan …

23andme, The Food And Drug Administration, And The Future Of Genetic Testing, Patricia Zettler, Jacob S. Sherkow, Henry Greely

Other Publications

On November 22, 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) effectively halted health-related direct-to-consumer genetic testing in the United States by sending a warning letter to 23andMe, the leading company in the field, directing it to stop providing such testing. The FDA acted as the era of widespread, clinical use of DNA sequencing rapidly approaches. The agency’s action will contribute to changes in which genetic tests are offered to patients and how testing is provided.

Digital Properties And Death: What Will Your Heirs Have Access To After You Die?, Ashley F. Watkins

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disruptive Technologies And The Law, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the past two decades, the concept of disruptive technology has gone from theory, to buzz word, to the captivation of the popular imagination. Disruptive innovation goes beyond improving existing products; it seeks to tap unforeseen markets, create products to solve problems consumers don't know that they have, and ultimately to change the face of industry. We are all the beneficiaries of disruption. Every smartphone carrying, MP3-listening, Netflix-watching consumer is taking advantage of technologies once unimaginable, but that now feel indispensable. Silicon Valley's pursuit of disruption will continue to benefit and delight a world of consumers. But where disruption may …

Some Thoughts On Technology And The Practice Of Law, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Bitcoin, The Law And Emerging Public Policy: Towards A 21st Century Regulatory Scheme, Gregory M. Karch

Florida A & M University Law Review

Bitcoin is the world's first decentralized digital currency. According to Lawrence Lessig, cryptography is "the most important technological breakthrough in the last one thousand years" and will be transformative. Bitcoin, capitalizing on cryptography, is a revolutionary digital currency protocol--a software system capable of tracking financial transactions without the need for a third party intermediary. The Bitcoin software is a "community-driven open source project released under an MIT license.”

This paper begins by briefly reviewing the mechanics of Bitcoin in Section I. Section II then surveys the rapidly expanding uses of Bitcoin, as well as the emerging application of Bitcoin. Since …

Procedural Architecture Matters: Innovation Policy At The Federal Communications Commission, J. Brad Bernthal

Publications

This Article examines the puzzle of whether today's Federal Communications Commission ("FCC" or the "Agency") is institutionally suited to craft telecommunications innovation policy and, if not, what changes are needed to better equip the Agency to respond to twenty-first century realities. Evaluation of FCC innovation policy performance is stubbornly difficult. Some criticize the FCC as a brake on innovation yet, under the FCC's oversight, the United States' communications industry has become an innovative engine propelling the overall economy more than ever before. It is difficult to untangle whether the FCC deserves credit for helping usher in today's communications age, whether …

Machine Learning And Law, Harry Surden

Publications

This Article explores the application of machine learning techniques within the practice of law. Broadly speaking “machine learning” refers to computer algorithms that have the ability to “learn” or improve in performance over time on some task. In general, machine learning algorithms are designed to detect patterns in data and then apply these patterns going forward to new data in order to automate particular tasks. Outside of law, machine learning techniques have been successfully applied to automate tasks that were once thought to necessitate human intelligence — for example language translation, fraud-detection, driving automobiles, facial recognition, and data-mining. If performing …

The (Data Privacy) Law Hasn't Even Checked In When Technology Takes Off, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Christopher Millard, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

From State Street Bank To Cls Bank And Back: Reforming Software Patents To Promote Innovation, Parker Hancock

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

For the past several decades, the Supreme Court and Federal Circuit have struggled to determine if, and under what circumstances, software is patentable. Once again, the Federal Circuit had an opportunity to provide clarity when it granted en banc review in CLS Bank. The resulting opinion contained a cursory per curiam decision and numerous concurrences and dissents, showing that the question is far from answered. Ultimately, the struggle over software patentability is not itself the problem, but a symptom of other problems in the patent system. Specifically, other substantive requirements of patentability are not weeding out overly broad patents because …

Legislating Trust, John D. Gregory

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

As governments in Canada and elsewhere have considered statutes to ensure that electronic communications are legally effective, they have invariably had to face questions about the reliability of those communications. Can we trust electronic messages, documents, and signatures? Are they the same in law as if they were on paper? What conditions should be imposed in order to give us the right assurances that we can trust them? To answer these questions properly, we need to understand the nature of “trust” and the extent to which legislation can be a source of it, and what other sources should be enlisted …

The Natural Complexity Of Patent Eligibility, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

It has long been assumed that the doctrine of patent eligibility’s prohibition of patents on “laws of nature,” “natural phenomena,” and “products of nature” rests on legalistic interpretations of those terms. But there is good reason to doubt this assumption. Since the doctrine’s inception, the Supreme Court has yet to provide any framework, formula, or factors explaining these “natural” terms. Rather, the Court has increasingly fixated on a list of scientific tropes, such as gravity, the heat of the Sun, and extracted metals, that it believes are true examples of “natural laws,” “phenomena,” and “products.”

An actual examination of scientific …

Preliminary Injunctions Post-Mayo And Myriad, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

The Supreme Court's recent interest in patentable subject matter has had several, unexpected downstream effects on preliminary injunctions in patent disputes.

The Supreme Court has recently expressed increased interest in patent eligibility, or patentable subject matter, the doctrine that limits the types of inventions eligible for patenting. Its two decisions, Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., in 2012, and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., in 2013, represented the first broad restrictions on patentable subject matter in over thirty years. And later this term, the Court will decide yet another patent eligibility case: Alice Corp. v. CLS …

The Stop Online Piracy Act: The Latest Manifestation Of A Conflict Ripe For Alternative Dispute Resolution, Steven Tremblay

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note examines how arbitration and mediation can be injected into the online copyright debate to better serve the interests of all parties. First, this Note addresses past litigation models to compare the benefits and costs of using the courts to resolve piracy issues. The history of litigation against mass peer-to-peer file sharers and individual downloaders is an important aspect to this story. Next, this Note describes the current state of copyright laws and how SOPA and PIPA would alter copyright protection against foreign piracy. Copyright holders, predominately represented by the Recording Industry Association of America, and content hosts, such …

Busting The Ghost Guns: A Technical, Statutory, And Practical Approach To The 3-D Printed Weapon Problem, Katherine E. Beyer

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Hanging Up Too Early: Remedies To Reduce Robocalls, Maria G. Hibbard

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.