Blog
The Future of Autonomous Vehicles and the Fourth Amendment
Level 4 autonomous vehicles, vehicles that do not require human interaction in most circumstances, are predicted to be on the road as soon as 2021. Experts believe that as autonomous vehicles grow in popularity and availability, the prevalence of car ownership will dramatically decrease.
SCOTUS Dodges Patent Eligibility Question, Ball is Now in Congress’s Court
What is the line dividing nature and patentable invention in life sciences and biotechnology? On January 13, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to answer this question by denying all pending petitions concerning patent eligibility.
Why the “Right to be Forgotten” Won’t Make it to the United States
In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) began to govern members of the European Union. The GDPR allows individuals the “right of erasure” — the ability to request erasure of personal data from the Internet. But the European Union’s top court recently stymied the regulation’s effect, ruling that search engine operators are not required to de-reference subjects globally. Thus, the potential spillover effects — i.e., the potential issue of whether a U.S. court ought to enforce a European de-referencing — won’t allow for a cascading privacy right debate to enter American discourse.
Privacy Policies in a World Without Privacy. Is There Such a Thing as a Good Privacy Policy?
Questions surrounding data privacy and what happens to our personal data when companies collect it have risen to the forefront of public discussion more in recent years than ever before.
Trademark Infringement in Virtual Reality Spaces: When Your Virtual World Gets Too Real
Increased development of virtual reality (“VR”) technology brings a host of legal questions surrounding both the intellectual property (“IP”) of the actual technology as well as unlawful activity within the VR space itself.
Cars, Smartphones and Waste: Fighting for the Right to Repair in 2019
Massachusetts is a hot battleground for Right to Repair movements – first for cars, and now for smartphones.
In re Ricardo P. and the Privacy Rights of Probationers: An Incomplete Resolution
Should a probationer be forced to submit to warrantless searches of their electronic devices at any time, including being forced to provide all electronic passwords to a probation officer to allow remote and continuous monitoring?
The Role of Underwriters in a World of Unicorns
What do WeWork, Lyft, and Smile Direct Club have in common? They are “tech companies,” their IPOs underperformed or didn’t happen at all, and they all hired JP Morgan as their underwriter.
Don’t Bury your Bitcoin! Estate Planning for Cryptocurrencies
From the transferability of social media or email accounts to maintaining online accounts linked to a client’s virtual assets, estate planning issues regarding digital assets have existed for some time. But, now that blockchain based assets such as cryptocurrencies are more commonplace, there is an increased need to plan for the disposition of these digital assets. Estate planning for cryptocurrencies raises unique concerns and the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies might provide potential solutions.
Is Seeing Still Believing? Deepfakes and Their Future in the Law
While video manipulation has been around since before Tom Hanks was shown meeting with President John F. Kennedy 31 years after his assassination in Forrest Gump, there has been a recent proliferation of a more sinister use of editing technology.
Scam Likely! Time for Phone Companies to Rise and Shine the Light on Robocalls
Do you ever receive an incoming call on your cell phone only to see it’s coming from a “Scam Likely”? Robocalls, or automated phone calls usually for scam or spam purposes, have risen to approximately 85 billion calls worldwide in 2018 according to the Hiya Global Robocall Radar Report.
Who Will Drive Innovation in CBD Products?
Cannabidiol (CBD) has the potential to be big business. Since the descheduling of hemp-derived CBD, large corporations have been exploring how they might capitalize on CBD’s hold on the public’s attention.
REMS Helps A Speedy Launch of CAR-T Cell Therapy
I first learned of CAR-T cell therapy in 2015 while working in an immunology lab. It immediately caught my attention as a brilliant, unconventional cancer treatment: it modifies a patient’s own T cells and enlists them to fight cancer. T cells can recognize non-self antigens presented on a cell’s surface, label those cells exogenous, and eliminate them. Scientists have developed CAR-T cell therapy by utilizing these unique characteristics of T cells.
Physical Touch in a Virtual World
Virtual reality is more lifelike than ever before — not only can users see and hear the virtual world, but they can now feel and smell it too. Two major industries embracing this technology are gaming and mental health treatment.
Can Blockchain Technology Change How IP Rights are Granted and Sold?
When the term blockchain is thrown around, most people think about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies that often populate headlines. While blockchain technology gained popularity and recognition in the area of cryptocurrencies and financial transactions, at its core, the technology has applications far beyond this narrow subset.
Stretched Beyond the Breaking Point: The CFAA and iPhone Batteries
Did Apple hack users’ devices? That is the allegation in a class action lawsuit filed late last year. Specifically, the plaintiffs in In re Apple Inc. Device Performance Litig., 347 F. Supp. 3d 434, 451 (N.D. Cal. 2018) allege that Apple’s battery-slowing iOS updates violated a federal hacking statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). This is the latest effort to stretch a broad, vague, and inconsistently-enforced law to cover new circumstances. This case illustrates the urgent need to write a statute that reflects today’s technological reality.
Something Like Deference: PTAB and 1-Way Issue Preclusion
The patent law system currently has an interesting parallel track open for those seeking to oppose a patent. That parallel track runs through both litigation in the district courts and Inter Partes Review [IPR] at the Patent Trial and Appeals Board [PTAB], a part of the Patent and Trademark Office [PTO]. A little under one year ago, the Supreme Court decided Oil States Energy, in which it stated that IPRs were not unconstitutional.
Recognizing Your Privacy Rights: Facial Recognition Technology and Third Party Doctrine
To understand how facial recognition technology interacts with a seemingly abstract standard of constitutional protection, a quick note about the Fourth Amendment is helpful.
Enhanced CFIUS review represents one of the strongest tools in the U.S. arsenal against China in the ongoing U.S.-China trade war.
Practicing SAFETY: A “New” Way for Companies to Manage Cyber-Risk
The socioeconomic ramifications of a single cyber-attack are extensive. These include financial harm, government investigations, regulatory fines, public backlash, negative industry reputation, and even shareholder lawsuits.
COPPA Crackdown: Why Courts are Right to Get Serious About Children’s Privacy
COPPA has been described as an “‘opt-in’ privacy band-aid” that doesn’t begin to reach the level of protection provided by, for example, the European Union’s earliest internet regulations,
Open Source Software and the Many Questions it Brings
From a legal standpoint, open source software creates a lot of questions. Who owns the collective work? Does a developer own his or her edits?
Fortnite Folly
Hyper-robust copyright protection for simple dance moves might not be ideal, but there does seem to be a cognizable harm in extracting an original dance from a community and monetizing it in the way Epic Games has with Fortnite’s emotes.
Let Them Eat Privacy Policies: When do Facebook Users Give Consent?
If you want to use Facebook, you do not have much choice — you must accept their use of your data or else not use the service.
Posts on the MTLR Blog are editorial opinion pieces written by student-editors of the Michigan Technology Law Review. The opinions expressed in these editorial posts are not espoused or endorsed by the University of Michigan or its Law School. To view scholarly Articles and Notes published by the Michigan Technology Law Review, please visit the MTLR home page.