Science and Technology Law Commons^™

The Sum Of The Parts Is Greater Than The Whole: Why Courts Determining Subject Matter Eligibility Should Analyze The Patent-Eligible And Unpatentable Portions Of The Claim Separately Instead Of Treating The Claim As A Whole, William J. Casey

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

For years, uncertainty has plagued the patent world regarding how to determine if claims are patent eligible. Recent Supreme Court decisions addressing patent eligibility, while resolving the eligibility of the claims before the Court, have not provided a general methodology for lower courts and the Patent and Trademark Office to follow. This note proposes a general method of analysis to determine patent eligibility. First, rather than treat the claim as a whole, the court or examiner should divide a claim into unpatentable and patent-eligible portions. Then the court or examiner should conduct a three-factor analysis to determine if the claim …

E-Discovery In The Cloud Era: What's A Litigant To Do, Cindy Pham

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

With great technology, comes great responsibility. In an era with increasing use and dependence on cloud computing, e-discovery is becoming increasingly complicated and expensive. These difficulties are further magnified when litigants and their attorneys are unfamiliar with how cloud technology works, and become lost trying to navigate through e-discovery rules in this new context.

Unprepared litigants do not understand how cloud technology can vastly extend the scope of discovery, and in turn, their preservation and production duties. This note provides an extensive background of cloud computing and details the problems litigants are encountering during cloud-based document discovery. This note further …

Informed Buyers Of E-Discovery: Why General Counsel Must Become Tech Savvy, John Didday

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Corporate counsel needs to understand big data, now. Civil discovery is getting bigger and more expensive by the day, but the legal field has been slow to find a solution. Too often, the huge data sets corporate litigants exchange before trial become a burden instead of an asset. Computer scientists have developed methods to aggregate and search large stores data effectively, but the legal system is intransigent; unless a leader brings technology to the law, litigation will only get slower and more expensive. I propose in-house counsel lead the way to implementing big data solutions by becoming informed buyers of …

Incubator Cities: Tomorrow's Economy, Yesterday's Start-Ups, Abraham J.B. Cable

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Venture development funds (“VDFs”) are products of state and local government law that use public funds to invest in local start-ups, in the hope that these companies will then attract venture capital investment. Existing analysis by legal scholars largely assumes that establishing a private venture capital market is essential to encouraging entrepreneurship. This article challenges that assumption. It argues that VDFs and other policies focused on encouraging venture capital are outmoded and inconsistent with the ultimate economic development goals of state and local governments. In many industries, entrepreneurs can now get by with less capital because the cost of developing …

Whose Social Network Account: A Trade Secret Approach To Allocating Rights, Zoe Argento

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Who has the superior right to a social network account? This is the question in a growing number of disputes between employers and workers over social network accounts. The problem has no clear legal precedent. Although the disputes implicate rights under trademark, copyright, and privacy law, these legal paradigms fail to address the core issue. At base, disputes over social network accounts are disputes over the right to access the people, sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands, who follow an account. This Article evaluates the problem from the perspective of the public interest in social network use, particularly the …

Geographically Restricted Streaming Content And Evasion Of Geolocation: The Applicability Of The Copyright Anticircumvention Rules, Jerusha Burnett

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

A number of methods currently exist or are being developed to determine where Internet users are located geographically when they access a particular webpage. Yet regardless of the precautions taken by website operators to limit the locations from which they allow access, it is likely that users will find ways to gain access to restricted content. Should the evasion of geolocation constitute circumvention of access controls so that § 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") applies? Because location data can properly be considered personally identifiable information ("PII"), this Note argues that § 1201 should not apply absent a …

Electronic Medical Records And E-Discovery: With New Technology Come New Challenges, Jeffrey L. Masor

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Electronic medical records have created new challenges for lawyers because all of the digitized information is printed on reams of paper during discovery. This makes the record both voluminous and difficult to interpret. This Note examines potential solutions that would allow lawyers to view electronic medical records in a digital format while preserving patient privacy. Two solutions are explored: 1) accessing the electronic medical record remotely by adapting tools that are already in place for doctors to remotely access patient records and 2) detailing a method to export an electronic medical record to a common, interoperable format.

Applying Bioethics In The 21st Century: Principlism Or Situationism?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

After an examination of the four cardinal bioethical principles which define Principlism — autonomy, beneficence, non maleficence and justice — an explication of Joseph Fletcher’s theory of Situationism is undertaken.

The conclusion of this Article is that when an ethical dilemma arises and is “tested” as to its moral efficacy, rather than judge the acts in question in order to determine whether they are in conformance with one of the four bioethical principles, it is more humane and practical to determine the ethical propriety of questioned conduct by use of a situation ethic which in fact is more sensitive. This …

Self-Replicating Technologies And The Challenge For The Patent And Antitrust Laws, Daryl Lim

Faculty Scholarly Works

Few patented inventions challenge the traditional boundaries of the patent and antitrust laws like those that are capable of multiplying as they are used. These self-replicating technologies are embedded in our food, fortify our vaccines, and form the computer code upon which the information age is based. These inventions create an inherent conflict between patentees and their customers. The conflict arises because every customer could become competitors as the product replicates, potentially making every first sale the patentee's last. They also challenge how we think about fundamental issues of ownership as well as innovation and market competition, and make it …

Tweets From The Grave: Social Media Life After Death, James R. Hollon

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Crowdfunding: Fleecing The American Masses, Zachary J. Griffin

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Personal Health Information Shared Via Social Networking: The Gap Between Reality And Protection, Madison M. Pool

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Akamai: A Cure For Medical Process Patent's Prometheus Ailment, Joanna Liebes

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

Despite all of the industry and academic focus on the recent Supreme Court case Mayo v. Prometheus, without the Federal Circuit's Akamai v. Limelight Networks decision, many medical process patents may be worthless. This note discusses the problem of subject matter eligibility for medical process patents after Mayo v. Prometheus, as it relates to the likelihood of infringement of those patents. After the Mayo decision, practitioners are attempting to redraft claims to ensure they contain patent eligible subject matter, but in doing so, they may be drafting claims that are impossible to directly infringe. This note proposes that the Akamai …

Compliance In The Ether: Cloud Computing, Data Security And Business Regulation, J. Nicholas Hoover

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Local Patent Rules On Rate And Timing Of Case Resolution Relative To Claim Construction: An Empirical Study Of The Past Decade, Pauline M. Pelletier

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Self-Replicating Technologies And The Challenge For The Patent And Antitrust Laws, 32 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 131 (2013), Daryl Lim

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Few patented inventions challenge the traditional boundaries of the patent and antitrust laws like those that are capable of multiplying as they are used. These self-replicating technologies are embedded in our food, fortify our vaccines, and form the computer code upon which the information age is based. These inventions create an inherent conflict between patentees and their customers. The conflict arises because every customer could become competitors as the product replicates, potentially making every first sale the patentee's last. They also challenge how we think about fundamental issues of ownership as well as innovation and market competition, and make it …

American Bar Association Criminal Justice Standards On Law Enforcement Access To Third Party Records, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Drafted over the past six years and adopted by the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates in February, 2012, these Criminal Justice Standards on Law Enforcement Access to Third Party Records provide much needed guidance to legislatures, courts, and administrative agencies having to decide how to regulate law enforcement access to existing records in the hands of third parties. It is the first framework of its kind, and it can do much to improve the current system of ad hoc protections in both state and federal systems. Decision makers are struggling to determine when to permit law enforcement access …

The Law And Science Of Video Game Violence: What Was Lost In Translation?, 31 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 297 (2013), William K. Ford

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

"[A]s a general rule," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes, "courts don't do science very well."' Susan Haack, a professor of law and philosophy, elaborates on why this may be true, offering several reasons for "deep tensions" between science and law. The reasons offered by Haack may be less of a concern where the dispute involves litigation against the government on significant questions of public policy. Recent decisions assessing the constitutionality of laws restricting minors' access to violent video games therefore offer an opportunity to examine how well the courts handled scientific evidence in a situation lacking some of the …

The Mobile Health Revolution?, Nathan Cortez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Rarely does a class of technologies excite physicians, patients, financeers, gadgeteers, and policymakers alike. But mobile health — the use of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets for health or medical purposes — has captured our collective imagination. Observers predict that mobile health, also referred to as “mHealth” or “medical apps,” can save millions of lives, billions in spending, and democratize access to health care. Proponents argue that mobile health technologies will transform the ways in which we deliver, consume, measure, and pay for care; disrupting our sclerotic health care system.

This Article evaluates mobile health and its many ambitions. …

After United States V. Jones, After The Fourth Amendment Third Party Doctrine, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the proposition that the Government can surreptitiously electronically track vehicle location for an entire month without Fourth Amendment restraint. While the Court's three opinions leave much uncertain, in one perspective they fit nicely within a long string of cases in which the Court is cautiously developing new standards of Fourth Amendment protection, including a rejection of a strong third party doctrine. This Article develops that perspective and provides a cautiously optimistic view of where search and seizure protections may be headed.

More detail:

United States v. Jones, in which the …