Pittsburgh Journal of Technology Law and Policy (University of Pittsburgh)
Not a member yet
177 research outputs found
Sort by
How the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Has Knocked the “SOX” off the DOJ and SEC and Kept the FCPA on Its Feet
Get PDFCongress passed both the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA” or “the Act”) and Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”) in reaction to national corruption and bribery scandals.[1] The reputation and integrity of American companies were under attack as these scandals unraveled and made international news. Allegations of fraud, bribery and illegal practices plagued corporate America. Congress needed legislation to address these problems to ensure its own country, as well as the international community, that the legislature would not tolerate corrupt business practices. The FCPA was enacted to decrease corruption and bribery and to improve the accuracy of accounting and record-keeping of companies, and the SOX was enacted for very similar purposes, yet twenty five years later. The FCPA requires companies to report their financial information in accordance with its provisions, while the SOX requires the Chief Executive Officers and Chief Financial Officers of public companies to guarantee that their financial reports are accurate.[2] During the first twenty five years after the FCPA was enacted, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) did not conduct many investigations into companies that had potentially violated the Act’s provisions. However, in the aftermath of the Enron[3] and WorldCom[4] scandals, which lead to the enactment of the SOX in 2002 and subsequent increased international awareness of the problems of bribery and financial fraud, there has been a significant increase in FCPA enforcement.[5] [1] The FCPA was enacted in 1977 in response to the Watergate scandal, and the SOX was enacted in 2002 in response to the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Lawrence A. Cunningham, Sharing Accounting’s Burden: Business Lawyers in Enron’s Dark Shadows, 57 Bus. Law. 1421, 1427 (2002) (commenting that the Enron scandal that led to the enactment of the SOX is “akin to the straw that broke the camel’s back, not a bull in a china shop. The accounting camel’s back has been broken before in a similar way. The early 1970s were riddled with accounting horror stories . . . that led to the enactment of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.”).[2] See Robert Prentice, Sarbanes-Oxley: The Evidence Regarding the Impact of SOX 404, 29 Cardozo L. Rev. 703, 706 (2007) (The SOX places more responsibility on CEOs and CFOs, as Congress felt that “executive certification would be more meaningful and persuasive to investors if those executives had reasonable grounds to believe that the internal financial controls on the process producing those numbers were solid.”).[3] The Texas-based energy company used complex partnerships to mask over 500 million of debt from its books and records. By disguising its financial statements, the company continued to obtain cash and credit payments to run its business operation, despite operating with such a large amount of debt. Enron filed for protection from creditors on December 2, 2002, which became the biggest corporate bankruptcy in American history. Its stock plummeted to merely pennies in 2002, although it previously was worth over 80. See Bethany McLean and Peter Elkin, The Smartest Guys in The Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (2003); Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Federal Jury Convicts Former Enron Chief Executives Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling on Fraud, Conspiracy And Related Charges (May 26, 2006), available at http://usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/May/06_crm_328.html (commenting that the Enron “scheme” was designed “to make it appear that Enron was growing at a healthy and predictable rate, consistent with analysts’ published expectations, that Enron did not have significant write-offs or debt and was worthy of investment-grade credit rating, that Enron was compromised of a number of successful business units, and that the company had an appropriate cash flow.”).[4] The Mississippi-based telecommunications company owned MCI, the second largest U.S. long distance carrier. From 1999 to 2002, the company improperly recorded their operating expenses as capital expenses, which falsely and drastically increased its profit margins. See Kyle Vasatka, WorldCom Scandal: A Look Back at One of the Biggest Corporate Scandals in U.S. History, Associated Content, March 8, 2007, http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/162656/worldcom_scandal_a_look_back_at_one.html?cat=3. [5] See David Hess & Cristie L. Ford, Corporate Corruption and Reform Undertakings: A New Approach to an Old Problem, 41 Cornell Int’l L.J. 307, 307-08 (2008) (commenting “[a]lthough [the FCPA’s] first twenty-five years were relatively quiet, the same cannot be said for its last five years.”); Justin F. Marceau, A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action: Evaluating and Forecasting the Trend of More Frequent and Severe Prosecutions Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 12 Fordham J. Corp. & Fin. L. 285, 285 (2007) (stating that “the Department of Justice has initiated four times more prosecutions over the last five years over the previous five years.”); Erin M. Pedersen, , The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Its Application to U.S. Business Operations in China, 7 J. Int’l Bus. & L. 13, 14 (2008) (noting that the SEC and DOJ “have recently begun an aggressive enforcement approach to the FCPA. . . . .”)
A \u27Sound\u27 Policy? The RIAA and The Copyright Act
Get PDF The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) has made headlines1 and garnered a fair amount of criticism in recent years, both for the first jury trial against an individual copyright infringer2 and for its litigation tactics.3 In the midst of the RIAA‘s aggressive litigation, issues related to proof have come to the forefront, particularly regarding the use of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses4 to determine the identity of alleged copyright infringers.5 Additionally, the RIAA and other organizations have sought to hold individuals owning unsecured wireless routers6 liable for any illegal file-sharing that takes place through the individual‘s router.7 The RIAA, in their vigilant defense of copyrighted material, has gone too far and legislative action is needed to provide protection for unwary consumers from the aggressive tactics of the RIAA
Impact of Global Patent and Regulatory Reform on Patent Strategies for Biotechnology
Get PDF I come to you this morning not as an intellectual property lawyer but as a former general counsel of biotechnology and pharmaceutical related companies, as an attorney with significant exposure to intellectual property issues and as one who has seen first-hand the importance of intellectual property in shaping commercial strategies in biotechnology. With that as a backdrop, I would like to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share with you today thoughts that I have regarding patents and the impact of patent reform on biotechnology. It has been said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. However, I believe that the best way to control the future is to patent it
“Too Legit to Quit”: Free Speech Clause Protection For Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum Broadcasters
Get PDFUnlike other types of media, broadcasters do not enjoy full First Amendment protection against government restraints on speech.1 The government’s authority to restrain broadcast speech derives from the intrinsic limitations of early radio signal modulation technology.2 Early radios were designed to communicate with each other by decrypting radio signals that were broadcasted over a single radio frequency.3 Interference with the per frequency operation of radios impeded early listeners’ abilities to hear speech from competing broadcasters and contributed to a perceived scarcity of broadcast frequencies (i.e., broadcast spectrum) for delivering free speech.4 Amid such perceived scarcity and due to the competition for access to the airwaves between broadcasters and the listening public interest, government restraints on broadcasters developed concomitantly with lowered First Amendment protection for broadcasters.5 Since then, broadcasters must apply for costly government-issued licenses to speak over the airwaves, and unlicensed broadcasters face sanctions
The Girl Talk Dilemma: Can Copyright Law Accomodate New Forms of Sample-Based Music?
Get PDFOn Gregg Gillis’ laptop computer are thousands of files representing a vast slice of 20th and 21st century popular music.1 His digital music collection is similar to that of many music consumers: it spans a wide variety of genres and runs from the obscure to the mainstream. But Gillis is different from most music consumers in that he uses computer software to cut his digital music files into audio snippets, or samples, and then piece them together into song collages.2 Gregg Gillis is Girl Talk, a recording artist on the Illegal Art label whose music has made yearend best music lists in Time Magazine,3 Rolling Stone,4 Blender5 and Pitchforkmedia.com.6 Girl Talk has developed a strong following throughout the United States and has toured throughout Europe and Australia.7 A PC user, he was recently featured in one of the “I’m a PC” ads for Microsoft.8 But while Girl Talk has been successful, Gillis adds almost no original musical content to his recordings. Although he often alters the speed or pitch of his samples, or loops them in a continuous pattern, he does not sing or rap over his creations. Furthermore, Gillis has never sought licenses or authorization for any of the samples he uses.9 For instance, his latest album, “Feed the Animals,” includes over 300 unauthorized samples10 of artists ranging from Lil Wayne to Radiohead to Metallica to Kenny Loggins
The Communications Decency Act of 1996: Why § 230 is Outdated and Publisher Liability for Defamation Should be Reinstated Against Internet Service Providers
Get PDF When Congress enacted § 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA")1 it changed the landscape of defamation law on the Internet. In the eleven years since Congress passed § 230, courts have interpreted it broadly, giving seemingly complete immunity to internet service providers ("ISPs") and website operators in third-party claims for defamation committed on the Internet.2 This essay argues that today, with the Internet being the dominant medium that it is, the CDA is outdated and unfair, and should be amended or repealed in favor of the common law framework for publisher liability in defamation.
Price Fix Away?: Does the Supreme Court’s Decision in Leegin Creative Leather Products Strengthen the Ability of Businesses to Engage in Vertical Price Restraints with Impunity?
Get PDFThe United States Supreme Court in recent years has taken an increased interest in patent law, making a number of key decisions in the areas of injunctions1, licensing2, patentable subject matter3, and the standards of determining obviousness.4 In the current 2007-2008 term, the Court has already granted certiorari to consider the boundaries of the patent exhaustion doctrine; a case closely watched by legal commentators and observers.5 The Court\u27s attention has also been drawn to the intersection of intellectual property law and antitrust law, with two cases in that legal realm having been recently decided. In Illinois Tool Works v. Independent Ink, the Court considered whether the presumption that patent owners have market power in the subject matter of their patents is "applicable in the antitrust context when a seller conditions its sale of a patented product . . . on the purchase of a second product."
The Future of Cameras in the Courts: Florida Sunshine of Judge Judy
Get PDF This paper explains why electronic broadcasting devices, including both video and audio, should be standard equipment in any courtroom given that newspaper readership is declining sharply and newspapers are cutting staff. The public now looks to so-called reality courts such as Judge Judy for how the legal system operates. It begins with an introduction discussing what many consider the trial that quashed momentum on broadcasting court proceedings: the O.J. Simpson trial. The article then considers a brief legal history of cameras in the courts, recent legislation on the topic, and arguments against cameras in the courts, including why those arguments fail. It concludes with the rationales for why broadcasting court proceedings is important to the public interest
Would You Like that iPhone Locked or Unlocked?: Reconciling Apple\u27s Anticircumvention Measures with the DMCA
Get PDFWhen Apple\u27s iPhone first hit the stores it was an epochal media event.2 Apple, long a leader in high-end computers and personal electronics, was poised to make its entry into ahighly-competitive market with a new mobile phone that promised groundbreaking technological capabilities in a sleek, ergonomic package. Apple\u27s CEO, Steve Jobs, extolled the iPhone\u27s virtues to an eager press, and, shortly thereafter, Apple\u27s stock jumped dramatically.3 Apple\u27s loyal devotees lined up in anticipation days before the phone\u27s June 29, 2007 release.4 It took Apple a mere seventy-four days to sell one million handsets.5 But some time after the fanfarehad settled down, public perception of the iPhone shifted. As consumers began to use the iPhone, the once-beloved phone began to acquire its share of discontents. Consumers expressed frustration in response to 300-page phone bills,6 expensive roaming charges,7 and, perhaps most vocally, to the technological methods Apple used to police its exclusive agreement with AT&T.