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Amazon’s New Kindle Will Be Competitive Against the iPad

Ever since the iPad's release in April 2010, Apple's competitors have been scrambling to release a credible competitor. When announcing the iPad 2, Apple's then CEO Steve Jobs bragged that the original iPad achieved above 90% market share, and he was right. After such...

An Apple Engineer Walks into a Bar…

It's been a big year for Apple. After passing Microsoft as the largest tech company by market capitalization last year, in August it leap-frogged Exxon to become the world's largest company, period. Later in the month, Steve Jobs announced his retirement as CEO, and...

What First-To-File Means For America

The America Invents Act of 2011 was approved by the House Judiciary Committee on April 14th, 2011 by a vote of 32-3, after being passed by the Senate in March. This act proposes some of the most significant changes for patent since at least 50 years. One of the most...

Threats and Technology

Norman Leboon was sentenced Thursday to 24 more months of jail, plus three years’ supervised release. His crime? Threatening Congressman Eric Cantor. What makes the case slightly relevant for this blog is the nature of the threat—a Youtube video. Unfortunately his...

What the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster Means for Nuclear Siting

The ongoing nuclear crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has brought to mind nuclear disasters from the past, specifically, the accidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and Three Mile Island in 1979.  While experts will work in the coming years to determine...

A Closed Book

The Google Books Project has hit another snag - the amended settlement agreement between the Authors Guild and Google has not been approved by the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York. While not an unexpected result, it does put the future...

Copyright Troll Lawsuits Face Roadblock

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported last week that over 40,000 unnamed "John Doe" defendants in California, Texas, Washington D.C., and West Virginia have been "effectively dismissed" in the P2P file-sharing lawsuits against them.  This is the latest news in...

The Internet’s Revolution

In the midst of worldwide change, there is a recurring theme: The role of the Internet. What has happened lately? In Egypt, as protests began in late January, the government responded by shutting down the internet (through various means), hoping to quell the voice of...

Parsing the Pause that Refreshes

This American Life, the popular public radio show hosted by Ira Glass, devoted its entire hour this past weekend to the cracking the Coca-Cola formula, perhaps the most famous trade secret in the world. Long rumored to contain cocaine, Ira Glass and company have...

IP2K?

The New York Times has an article on Vint Cerf, who played a major role in the beginnings of what we now know as the Internet and currently serves as Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, and IPv6. For those who don't know, all web URLs...

The Closing of Open Mic Night

The Washtenaw Voice reports that a popular weekly music event at the Jolly Pumpkin, the popular Ann Arbor restaurant, has been shut down to copyright issues. Performers were informed by Jolly Pumpkin management that the event violated rights held by ASCAP, the...

Bing Is Not Google – Or Is It?

Wired and the Wall Street Journal have reported that Google has accused Bing, Microsoft's Internet search engine, of copying Google's search results. Google reports that Microsoft initially denied this claim; later, Wired revealed that Microsoft was dismissive of...

State of the Union: The Nation of Google and Facebook

During last week’s State of the Union address, President Obama (predictably) spent a great deal of time outlining a strategy for modernizing the U.S. economy and enhancing American competitiveness in an increasingly global market. In his speech, the President...

Facebook Posts: Protected Concerted Activity under the NLRA?

The New York Times recently reported that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed a complaint against an employer for firing an employee over a Facebook post. According to the article, the employer, American Medical Response of Connecticut, fired one of...

Vodafone Caves to Egyptian Government

Egypt has taken the dramatic step of shutting down internet and cellular phone access in an effort to stop social networking from facilitating the protest movement across the country.  Much like Tunisia last week, and Iran after the 2009 election, social networking...

Harsh Illinois Eavesdropping Statutes Send Citizens to Prison

Ignorance of the law is not a defense, as two Illinois citizens have recently discovered. Christopher Drew and Tiawanda Moore are both facing up to fifteen years in prison for crimes that they did not realize they were committing.  The New York Times recently...

A Call to Sunny Arms

Solar panels use sunlight to provide clean, renewable power. And in contrast to the days when solar energy was only feasible for use in small electronics like calculators, today the technology has advanced to the point where it has far greater potential.  The White...

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.