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United States Supreme Court IP Cases, 1810–2019: Measuring & Mapping the Citation Networks
Get PDFIntellectual property law in the United States, though shaped by key statutes, has long been a common-law field to a great degree. Many decades of decisional law flesh out the meaning of broad-textured, sparely worded statutes. Given the key roles of patent law and copyright law, both federal, the Supreme Court of the United States is i.p. law’s leading apex court. What are the major topical currents in the Supreme Court’s i.p. cases, both now and over the course of the Court’s work? This study uses network-analysis tools to measure and map the entirety of the Court’s i.p. jurisprudence. It goes deeper than existing studies of judicial citation networks by focusing on a topically defined subnetwork. It goes further than existing studies by analyzing, in addition to basic citation networks, a time series of co-citation networks—using techniques developed within bibliometrics, for mapping a scholarly field’s conceptual terrain, to track and describe doctrinal change. Emerging bottom up from the Court’s citations, the co-citation map charted here reveals, surprisingly, a core of antitrust and patent misuse cases from the 1920s–1940s exerting significant influence on i.p. doctrine. It also helps highlight how the substance of the Court’s recent i.p. decisions, from 1986 to 2019, differ from what came before
You Can\u27t Trust Everything on the Internet: A Look Into Texas\u27 and Maryland\u27s Approach of Social Media Authentication
Get PDFIf unauthenticated evidence is admitted into the court\u27s record, and makes a defendant’s charge more probable, that defendant’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to life and liberty have been violated. Social media evidence, due to the ease of hacking and catfishing, can be unreliable, thus Maryland and Texas have led the way, with two respective approaches, on how to handle such evidence. Maryland, with its proscribed three authentication methods, has a less trusting view of social media, and realizes the dangers wrongfully entered evidence may have on a defendant’s due process. Alternatively, Texas has not heighten scrutiny on social media evidence that can easily be falsified and hacked, leaving the possibility that the record could include unauthentic evidence that leads to a conviction, contrary to due process. With the ever-changing internet, courts must shift their views and procedures in order to protect defendant\u27s constitutional freedoms
Defining Who Is an Employee After A.B.5: Trading Uniformity and Simplicity for Expanded Coverage
Get PDFA.B.5 made a significant but limited expansion of the coverage of California labor law but at a notable cost. Even as A.B.5 broadened the reach of the Golden State’s labor protections, A.B.5 also made the definition of “employee” more complex and less uniform. Those seeking federal or state legislation like A.B.5 confront the same trade-off under which greater coverage is achieved at the expense of more complexity and less uniformity in the definition of who is an employee. The same political forces and policy considerations which molded A.B.5 in California will have similar effects in other states and in the halls of Congress.
A.B.5 is thus an important data point which indicates that those who seek to reform the law of employee status face a trade-off: Efforts to expand the coverage of employment-based protection laws will make the law more complex and less uniform – as did A.B.5. Given the relevant political forces and policy considerations, legislators can broaden the reach of employment-based regulatory laws to cover more workers in the modern economy or they can simplify and unify the legal definition of employee status. They cannot do both
The Essentially-at-Home Requirement for General Jurisdiction: Some Embarrassing Cases
Get PDFIn Daimler AG v. Baumann, the Supreme Court held that general jurisdiction does not exist unless the defendant is “essentially at home” in the forum. It offered two examples of places fitting this description but gave little further guidance or justification. A metaphor, such as essentially at home, is a bad way to express a legal standards, because the essence of a metaphor is that it substitutes one reality for another, creating a deliberate confusion. The Court also equated general jurisdiction with what it called all-purpose jurisdiction, which is wrong because it is easy to pose cases in which general jurisdiction does not extend to all purposes.
This article focuses on anomalous outcomes that can result from the essentially at home requirement. The focus is on four situations that produce what can be called embarrassing cases. The four are titled, in an effort at brief description, The Multistate Partnership, The Border Town, The Biggest Business in the State, and Specific Jurisdiction Next Door. In these situations, the at home requirement produces unjust and sometimes anomalous results. And the article suggests that there are many other types of cases in which there will be odd results.
The Supreme Court would do well to reconsider the essentially at home requirement and configure it in a way that works better
Child Support and Joint Physical Custody
Get PDFChild custody has evolved to the point where, at a minimum, states provide a mediated process by which parents may formulate parenting plans with court-appointed assistance. At a maximum state legislatures and courts increasingly consider joint physical custody awards. While joint physical custody safeguards the fundamental rights of parents, it nonetheless prompts practical concerns in awarding child support. Today, child support begins with state statutory guidelines, but the guidelines often fail to adequately address the economic consequences of two complete residences, one supported by a parent with fewer economic resources, and the fact that oftentimes the child drifts from one to the other soon after the court order.
This Article argues that child custody and child support should be formulated in the similar fashion. That is, borrowing the approach proposed by the American Law Institute, it is prudent for separating couples to be assisted in developing a child support plan, just as they are assisted in developing a child parenting (custody) plan. The federalization of child support, the guidelines, and the enforcement mechanisms involved, distract states from the urgency of involving parents, together with professionals, in formulating workable child support plans. The child support guidelines are and will remain the first step, but they cannot be the last if child support is to be equal with child custody in providing for the best interest of the child
Innovative Thinking: Modernizing Outer Space Governance
Get PDFSpace security is essential to global safety and prosperity. International treaties should modernize and reflect the world’s innovation in space and governance needs. One must look back to 1967 for the inaugural “Outer Space Treaty,” the first and only binding multilateral agreement for peaceful space use and exploration. In 50 years, technologies and space capabilities have evolved; an updated global treaty and agreement should be developed and evaluated. Both China and Russia have demonstrated their capability to degrade and/or destroy adversaries’ satellites in space. Space wars are no longer a hypothetical. The future once discussed and anxiously anticipated after Sputnik I is here. While the United States is maximizing efforts to protect and secure its satellites from harm, this activity may not be enough as international law on space security does not meet today’s needs. Now, more than ever, with the space security and cybersecurity realms intersecting, and with the achievement of adversarial space capabilities, there is a need to review and update the Outer Space Treaty. Recent weapons testing and the resultant challenges to keeping satellites in orbit have highlighted glaring the gaps in space governance. This domain is ripe for a new review to prevent the weaponization of outer space and potential international instability, and to secure satellites’ receipt and transfer of digital information, which is vital to all mankind’s way of life
Sounds of Science: Copyright Infringement in AI Music Generator Outputs
Get PDFThe music business is no stranger to disruptive technology. The industry’s apparent comeback from the devastating downturn caused by illegal file sharing seems to have arrived just in time for what may be an even more disruptive technological phenomenon: artificial intelligence (“AI”). Much has been said about the implications of AI-generated music, ranging from issues of ownership, to rights of publicity. However, there has been surprisingly little discussion of infringement in the AI systems’ outputs. By examining the functionality of AI music generators through the lens of de minimis use case law, this paper will explain how the outputs of AI music generators potentially infringe the exclusive reproduction right granted to musical work and sound recording copyright owners. Going forward, courts and policymakers must not ignore AI’s capacity to undermine our incentives for human authorship, and craft rules that promote a mutually beneficial AI music ecosystem for technology companies and copyright owners alike
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on Religious Freedom
No full textOn the afternoon of August 3, 2021, the Catholic Law community joined together for a virtual event focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on religious liberty jurisprudence. The program comes as the second in the 2021 Summer Discussion Series as part of an ongoing effort to explore pressing legal questions that have arisen out of the pandemic. For the afternoon’s discussion, Mark Rienzi, Director of the Center for Religious Liberty and Professor of Law at Catholic Law, and President of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, was joined by alumni speaker William Haun ’12, Counsel for The Becket Fund and Nonresident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
A Democratic View of Public Employee Speech Rights
Get PDFThe question of the scope of public employee free speech rights is of obvious importance. Such cases are frequently litigated. The speaker\u27s continuing employment is commonly at stake. The appropriate functioning of the government agency may be at issue as well. But government agencies are intended to operate not only with internal efficiency but with proper accountability to the public. And such accountability requires an appropriate degree of agency openness, transparency, and meaningful disclosure on publicly significant matters. Adequately assuring the democratic accountability of government agencies, it turns out, requires greater protection of public employee speech than is currently available