Science and Technology Law Commons^™

The Copyright Requirement Of Human Authorship For Works Containing Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content, Runhua Wang

IP Theory

The U.S. Copyright Office (the “Office”) unwaveringly refuses to register copyrights for artworks created by artificial intelligence (“AI”) systems. The prima facie reason is a lack of authorship because the U.S. copyright regime recognizes only humans as authors. However, the fundamental reason lies in the fact that legislators have not yet determined whether to grant copyrights to AI users. Despite adjustments made by the Office in response to the use of AI systems in creation, the agency’s implementation of copyright statutes suggests that it remains extremely conservative, rejecting any AI-generated content (“AIGC”) from copyright registration.

Will the copyright regime continue …

Comparative Intellectual Property & Religion, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

IP Theory

This Article introduces religion to comparative IP scholarship and explains how faith-based considerations can enhance it. Comparative IP scholars have extensively studied different IP laws in different jurisdictions, but they seemed to suggest an erroneous view that comparative IP and religion are like two parallel lines without intersection. Building on these scholars’ work, this Article discusses religion’s role in fostering a new vehicle for discussion and a new normative lens with the aim of ascertaining the existence and extent of religion in legal systems, serving as part of the comparison methodology between legal systems with potential for influencing the policy …

Enhancing 21 U.S.C. §§ 355, 356, And 360 To Encompass Artificial Intelligence-Based Drug Design And Manufacturing Methods, Aj Tsang

Michigan Technology Law Review

Despite newfound attention to how artificial intelligence (AI) may accelerate pharmaceutical development, federal regulators may find that current statutes are ambiguous or silent about their applicability to AI-based drug design and manufacturing methods. This poses a serious problem in the era of Loper Bright and the Major Questions Doctrine. As federal agencies struggle to adjust to courts’ growing demand for Congress to craft clear, explicit, and express delegations of authority, this note develops a statutory framework in which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would have more flexibility to regulate the use of AI in advanced drug manufacturing. Guided by …

Keep The Driver In Driverless Cars: Let's Take A Few Cues From The Aviation Industry, Tifani Sadek

Journal of Law and Mobility

As a law professor who studies mobility, I spend many waking hours thinking about fully automated vehicles, those cars that drive themselves without any need for a human operator. As a true believer in this technology, I think the widespread deployment of these vehicles will get more people home safely, give commuters their time back, and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in our environment. However, lately, I worry whether this will ever happen. A recent Pew study showed that only 26% of the U.S. public believes that self-driving cars are a good thing for society, which is an all-time …

Skinny Labels: Changing Scenario Of Induced Infringement And Public Policy, Sandhu, Amit Dhillon

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention to the inventor. However, when it comes to life-sustaining products, these exclusive rights have a negative impact on people’s lives. The government has tried to develop initiatives, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act, to compensate and speed up the entry of affordable medicines into the market. But when one patent addressing one medical condition (indication) blocks the entry of the generic, the use of skinny labels makes it possible for the generic players to carve out the label and enter the market only with indications that are off-patent. This helps bring …

Innovator Ecosystem Diversity As A Global Competitiveness Imperative, Margo A. Bagley

Faculty Articles

There are myriad ways that discrimination and bias can combine to profoundly limit inventor participation in the patent process. The utilitarian purpose of patents is to incentivize inventors to invent and disclose, so it makes sense to incentivize as large and as diverse a group as possible in order to maximize the likely output of innovative activity. This incentive is important in terms of our geopolitical aspirations as a country, but hopefully also because of our democratic commitment to provide opportunities for flourishing and reaching one's potential that are available to all.

Don't Kill The Baby! The Case For Ai In Arbitration, Michael J. Broyde, Yiyang Mei

Faculty Articles

Since the introduction of Generative AI (GenAI) in 2022, its ability to simulate human intelligence and generate content has sparked both enthusiasm and concern. While much of the criticism focuses on AI’s potential to perpetuate bias, create emotional dissonance, displace jobs, and raise ethical questions, these concerns often overlook the practical benefits of AI, particularly in legal contexts. This article examines the integration of AI into arbitration, arguing that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) allows parties to contractually choose AI-driven arbitration, despite traditional reservations.

This article makes three key contributions: (1) It shifts the focus from debates over AI’s personhood …

Balancing Interests: Ai, Business & Human Rights, And The Legal Landscape In An Era Of Disruption, Jena Martin, Ritu Narula

Faculty Articles

On October 30, 2023, the Biden Administration issued a sweeping executive order espousing a policy to advance the development and use of artificial intelligence ("Al") while also establishing safeguards across the federal government. The Executive Order marked the U.S. government's largest move forward related to the regulation of Al. The Order also represents the government's latest effort to advance equity, privacy, and national security in the use of AI systems. Moreover, the Order comes at a time when governments around the world are wrestling with the impact of AI and its disruptive effect, not just on markets, but on society …

Tribes And Ai: Possibilities For Tribal Sovereignty, Adam Crepelle

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has permeated every facet of modern existence. Governments across the globe are exploring its applications and attempting to establish regulatory frameworks. Numerous scholars have proffered recommendations for governing AI at the local, national, and international levels. However, as is often the case, Indian tribes have been neglected in AI policy discussions. This oversight is significant because the 574federally recognized tribes are sovereigns with their own judicial, education, and healthcare systems. Due to their relatively small populations and geographic isolation, tribes stand to benefit significantly from the services AI can perform. Moreover, tribes are uniquely well suited to …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

The 3rs And Non-Human Animals In Biomedical Research: The Next 65 Years, Paul Locke, Richelle Romanchik, Breanne Kincaid, Emily Golden

Animal Law Review

It has been 65 years since the publication of Russell and Burch’s “The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique,” which established the ‘3Rs’—refinement, reduction, and replacement—as the key principles applicable to decision making about, and the use of, non-human animals in laboratory settings. The 3Rs are universally accepted by responsible scientists throughout the world and form the basis for many national legal and regulatory systems governing animal use in laboratories. This Article will discuss broadly how the 3Rs have evolved over the past seven decades since the publication of Russell and Burch’s seminal work, and examine the 3Rs in light of …

Alchemizing The Bar: An Examination Of Global Ethical Considerations For Using Alternatives To Animals In Research, Testing, And Education, Lenore M. Montanaro

Animal Law Review

Countries regulate scientific research in various ways. Such structures are the result of input from scientists, attorneys, physicians, advocates, and others. These schemes may also derive from outcomes of the research itself. Some countries do not incorporate or require the ethical use of an animal—or an alternative to the use of an animal—to be considered. Others do incorporate, and even require, the ethical use of animals in research. In alignment with The Three Rs—replacement, reduction, and refinement of animals used in science—technological capabilities now allow scientists to increasingly use alternatives, such as microphysiological systems, rather than animal models. This Article …

Artificial Intelligence Is Like A Perpetual Stew, Nathan Reitinger

American University Law Review

Artificial intelligence is inescapable. It is in our phones, fridges, and most of the businesses we engage with use it to “improve” their services. From deciding on what YouTube video to watch next to driving vehicles or firing weapons, artificial intelligence is a linchpin in our society. But what is artificial intelligence? And, more importantly, why does that matter? It matters because we are currently unprepared to deal with the paradigm-shifting legal issues brought about by artificial intelligence. And without this understanding, we are nearly certainly going to make mistakes. The bright side is that artificial intelligence is not complicated. …

Venture Capital Culpability: Potential Liabilities For Venture Capital Investment Of Fraudulent Portfolio Companies, Calzia, Kyle D.

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Due to the possible detrimental effects of broadening liability for venture capitalists, any change would need to balance the dangers of limiting economic growth with the public policy motives of protecting shareholders. An expansion of securities law in Section 10b and Rule 10b-5 could open venture firms to liability as aider-abettors to securities fraud, specifically when venture firms continue to offer financial or directional assistance after having reason to know of securities fraud by their portfolio companies. Additionally, stricter examinations of agency relationships and director duties that are required from venture firm partners that sit on portfolio boards could see …

Venture Capital's Esg Problem, Ryan A. Ashburn

Law Student Publications

Venture capital (“VC”) is repeatedly described as one of the “crown jewels” of the U.S. economy for its role in financing startups and innovation. However, recent corporate scandals, including fraud, have exposed a darker side of the VC industry and the startups in which venture capitalists (“VCs”) invest. For example, Theranos received $686 million in VC funding yet proved to be nothing more than a “house of cards” once it came to light that Theranos falsified blood test results. When Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud, many VCs tried to distance themselves, saying Theranos was an exception and …

Distinguishing Privacy Law: A Critique Of Privacy As Social Taxonomy, Maria P. Angel, Ryan Calo

Scholarly Works

What distinguishes violations of privacy from other harms? This has proven a surprisingly difficult question to answer. For over a century, privacy law scholars labored to define the illusive concept of privacy. Then they gave up. Efforts at distinguishing privacy came to be superseded at the turn of the millennium by a new approach: a taxonomy of privacy problems grounded in social recognition. Privacy law became the field that simply studies whatever courts or scholars talk about as related to privacy.

And it worked. Decades into privacy as social taxonomy, the field has expanded to encompass a broad range of …

The Battle Between Open Markets And National Security: How Limiting Investments Into Foreign Technology Might Be Hurting National Security Goals, Alexandra Van Cleef

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Breaking Algorithmic Immunity: Why Section 230 Immunity May Not Extend To Recommendation Algorithms, Max Del Real

Washington Law Review Online

In the mid-1990s, internet experiences were underwhelming by today’s standards, despite the breakthrough technologies at their core. When a person logged on to the internet, they were met with a static experience. No matter who you were, where you were, or how you accessed a particular website, it rendered a consistent page. Today, internet experiences are personalized, dynamic, and vast—a far cry from the digital landscape of just a few decades ago. While today’s internet is unrecognizable compared with its early predecessors, many of its governing laws remain materially unaltered. In particular, section 230 of the Communications Act, which passed …

American Star Chamber: Online Misinformation, Government Intervention, And The Intellectual Matrix Of The First Amendment, Emily E. Burton

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Just as monarchs and clerical authorities struggled to respond to seditious and heretical writings enabled by the invention of the printing press, twenty-first century governments are experiencing a similar information revolution as a result of the digital age and a rising tide of what the United States has labeled online misinformation. Like the printing press, the Internet has enabled the spread of information at an exponentially lower cost and an exponentially higher speed as it extends the ability to publish thoughts and opinions to an increasingly diverse array of individuals. Although this was largely celebrated during the first two decades …