Blog
Jury Awards $70 Million to Kalamazoo-Based Stryker Corp.
A mere four days after U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker issued a claim construction memorandum and order in the case of Stryker Corp. v. Zimmer Inc., Zimmer Holdings was told to pay $70 million to Stryker Corp. for infringing patents related to a device that removes...
Fair Use in an Educational Setting
The University of Michigan just recently won a lawsuit in which the University was alleged of copyright infringement in its effort to digitize its library contents. On September 12, 2011, the Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors, the Union Des Écrivaines...
The Law and Economics of Cellulosic Fuels
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s ruling in American Petroleum Institute v. EPA (issued January 25, 2013) regarding cellulosic biofuel regulation is an interesting example of the interplay between law and economics. The court ruled in...
Should Fashion Design Be Given Copyright Protection?
January 3, 2013 marked the end of the 112th Congress and beginning of the 113th Congress, and with it, the death of the Innovative Design Protection Act of 2012 (IDPA). The bill, proposed by Senator Chuck Schumer in September 2012, would have amended Chapter 13 of the...
Yelp and Other Google Competitors’ Failed Cry for Help Leaves Internet Users the Ability to Keep Googling Away
After an almost two-year probe by the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") into whether Google Inc. used its monopoly on the Internet search market to illegally injure its rivals, on January 3, Google avoided a potentially crippling federal antitrust lawsuit. The...
MTTLR Blog now publishing to Twitter and Facebook
The MTTLR Blog will now publish to Twitter as @MTTLRBlog and to Facebook. If you use either of those services, follow the MTTLR Blog there.
The Internet, Innovation, and Entrepreneurialism: Legislation v. Self-Regulation
I recently had a conversation with a friend about an innovative coffee cup design he had discovered on the popular crowd-funding website, Kickstarter. Kickstarter was troublingly described to me as a glorified electronic bulletin board with seemingly little to no...
Got a negative review on Yelp? Seems like you’re out of luck!
Certainly, most of you are familiar with Yelp, a website that provides user reviews on various companies, organizations, etc. I, for one, use this website religiously as a guidance for which restaurants to try out and which to avoid (since I am a student on a tight...
Property Rights of a Twitter Handle
In this age of social media and social networking, Twitter has become a resource that continues to grow in importance. While still less than seven years old, Twitter is one of the 10 most popular websites in the world and has over 500 million registered users. Authors...
Supreme Court to Revisit Question of Patentable Subject Matter
Since the establishment of the Federal Circuit three decades ago, the Supreme Court has tended to distance itself from the development of patent law. As the Federal Circuit holds exclusive jurisdictions over appeals arising from disputes involving patents, circuit...
Driverless Cars – Who’s in Control?
Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Ford’s out-of-the-box thinking is what led to the creation of the automobile, an invention that most people today could not imagine...
When can police search a cell phone?
How does the Fourth Amendment apply to the contents of technological devices, particularly in the context of inventory searches pursuant to a lawful arrest? In March 2012, headlines such as "Police can now search cell phones without warrant" warned Americans of the...
Old Regulations, New Technology
California’s Bay Area is moving towards a new means of transportation, but not if the state government can have its way. SideCar is a San Francisco-based startup that offers real-time ridesharing to a community of smartphone users who need transportation throughout...
YouTube Updates its Content ID Dispute Process, but is it Enough?
On October 3, 2012, YouTube announced a change in its content ID dispute process, as updated on its blog. What does this update really mean and why does it matter? A short story might help clarify the situation. Last spring, long before I enrolled to take Copyright, I...
Are Your E-mail Communications Protected by the Stored Communications Act?
Last month, the Supreme Court of South Carolina ruled that the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) did not protect e-mails contained in a user’s webmail account. Jennings v. Jennings, No. 27177 2012 WL 4808545 (S.C. Oct. 10, 2012). The e-mail user sued his wife and her...
Equity-based Crowd-funding
While the internet may have developed uses beyond its singular purpose described in Avenue Q, using it to fund new ideas and start-up companies remains a difficult process. With the recent passage of the Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups (JOBS) Act in April, obtaining...
Gaming Mods and Copyright
As computer and video gaming has grown from a niche market into a multi-billion dollar industry, gaming modifications, or "mods," have grown in scope and use as well. Mods have become as communal and omnipresent as the increasingly networked and social games upon...
Songkick introduces Detour, challenges the live-music business status quo
The Internet has long been a place for fans to gather and discuss the pop culture they love. In recent years, however, the internet has begun to take that love to the next level, allowing fans to actively contribute to projects they find intriguing. The most...
Can the government force you to decrypt your hard drive?
To qualify for Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination, a court must be satisfied that the requested testimony will be a (1) compulsion of a (2) testimonial communication that is (3) incriminating. When dealing with material evidence that is locked away...
FTC Crackdown on Tech Support Scammers
On September 24, the FTC filed six federal cases against companies, mostly based in India, that have allegedly been scamming consumers by posing as computer tech support. The FTC describes the move as a “major international crackdown” against tech support scams. The...
Joint Infringement – A New Direction?
In a recent combined en banc decision, a divided Federal Circuit overruled its own prior decision regarding joint infringement – all the steps of a method claim no longer have to be committed by a single entity – by a 6-5 vote. Joint infringement covers cases when a...
Japanese Company to Acquire 70% of Sprint
On October 15, Japanese tech titan SoftBank announced that it will acquire 70% of Sprint Nextel. The $20.1 billion deal will allow Sprint to compete with the two largest American wireless companies, Verizon and AT&T, by providing Sprint with $8 billion in new...
BioDifferents?
When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on June 28, the impact was diverse and widespread. Relief was felt in one corner of the pharmaceutical industry, however, as the decision protected continued...
No Harm, No Foul?
On October 5th, Facebook moved to dismiss allegations that it tracked users’ online activity after they logged out of the social network, because the users failed to show how they were harmed. This allegation of secretive-tracking-post-logout is the central claim of...
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.