Have you ever received a bunch of annoying promotional e-mails and let them stuck in your inbox because you hardly find the “unsubscribe” button in the e-mail? Or have you ever made a hasty choice because your heart is trembling fast when an “Only 1 room left!” notification appears in a travel website? If that were the case, then most… read more
As technology advances and new scientific discoveries are made, more courts are faced with issues of admissibility and reliability as challenges in administering their use. Judges and juries are faced with difficult scientific and often unscientific propositions delivered through self-serving expert witnesses and tailored studies. Development of science and tech in the courts is not limited to new findings of… read more
Can a video game company be held liable for placing virtual items on private property? The answer is – maybe. On February 14, 2019, the developer of the mobile game Pokémon Go, Niantic, reached a settlement agreement with class action plaintiffs who alleged that the game caused players to trespass and create nuisance on private properties. For those unfamiliar with… read more
With the advent and then explosion of consumer internet access in the 1990s, a concomitant threat of massive, anonymous, and difficult-to-trace copyright infringement also arose. Congress faced significant pressure from two major industries: traditional media producers and internet service providers. Traditional media producers feared the practical death of their intellectual property through unstoppable and untraceable internet file-sharing, while internet service… read more
Since the beginning of the digital revolution, copyright law has had to adapt to the advent of new technologies and their impact on the world of creation. Software protection, mainly, raised a lot of issues that still fuel the judicial debate. Indeed, while it is well established that software can be copyrighted as literary works, the extent of the protection… read more
In the artistic world, the development of the Internet, while creating a tremendous way for artists to spread their work worldwide and gain in notoriety, created an environment very much in favor of online piracy, which right holders are still trying to circumvent. The development of new technologies made possible the transmission of unlawful high-quality copies of protected works to… read more
Clorox sells a product, “disinfecting wipes,” that boasts on its container, “Kills 99.9% of Viruses & Bacteria.” It’s a great product, and I use it every day. But it’s a good thing there’s plenty more bacteria around. Scientists have begun deferring to them for inspiration, and it turns out, bacteria just might provide the panacea for an array of genetic… read more
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a broad term, used to describe how computers can mimic certain operations of the human mind. Upon hearing the term, many people had vaguely pictured sci-fi inspired images of machine-ruled futures and humanoid robots. As Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo program triumphed against South Korean Go grandmaster Lee Sedol in 2016, however, the neutral networks and machine learning… read more
Gene editing was once quite difficult. Though it was not impossible to insert a new sequence of DNA into a bacterium and measure the effects, as recently as a decade ago, the process consumed unsustainably large amounts unlucky graduate students’ time and effort. In 2012, a groundbreaking paper from the group led by Dr. Jennifer Doudna at the University of… read more
President Trump’s remarks that NFL owners should fire players who chose to kneel during the national anthem and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ statement that Jemele Hill’s tweets disparaging Trump were a “fireable offense” pose an important question: can a private-sector employee be fired based on his or her political speech? The simple answer is yes; an employer… read more