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The NLRA and Social Media: Why the NLRB Can Be Facebook Friends With Both Employees and Employers
Get PDFImportance of Politics in the Reform of Capital Markets: Case Study of the Egyptian Capital Market
Get PDFA Proposal for Eliminating Adjudicative Loopholes Under Statutory Law of Trade Secrets in the Seventh Circuit
Get PDFToday, when 70% of business value is derived from intangible assets, and trade secret misappropriation (TSM) is the most frequently litigated form of intellectual property protection, it is critical to ensure that judicial remedies for misappropriation of intellectual property remain adequate without encouraging abusive litigation. With this goal in mind, in 1979, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws promulgated the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) in order to ensure a uniform and consistent treatment of trade secrets among the states. The Uniform Act displaced business torts claims that arise in common law, but only if those claims conflicted with the law of trade secrets. In its most recent decision interpreting the Illinois equivalent of the Uniform Act, Spitz v. Proven Winners, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, by upholding the district court\u27s dismissal of common-law claims on summary judgment, held that the plaintiff\u27s statutory claim of trade secret misappropriation displaced the plaintiff\u27s common-law claim of unjust enrichment even in the absence of a finding that the business information at issue amounted to a trade secret. As a result of this holding, TSM plaintiffs may be left without a common-law remedy if they plead, but do not adequately prove, statutory trade secret misappropriation-notwithstanding the fact that different elements are required for common-law tort claims.
This Article promotes legal certainty by answering the following questions: (1) whether it is appropriate to dismiss common-law claims on summary judgment, and (2) whether all common-law claims should be displaced by claims of trade secret misappropriation or whether some should be allowed. The viability of any principled approach to answering these questions and avoiding adjudicative loopholes hinges on the definition of the statutory term “displace.” Typically, courts do not give a second thought to defining the term “displace,” but the UTSA and state statutes are silent on how this term should be construed, suggesting an expectation of judicial discretion. This Article posits that the statutory term “displace” should be construed as “preempt” (adjudicate first) rather than “preclude” (prohibit). As a necessary consequence of this interpretation, displacement of common-law claims should require adjudication of concurrently brought claims of trade secret misappropriation. This Article will demonstrate that otherwise TSM plaintiffs may, erroneously, be left without any remedy, which is not consistent with statutory intent
Faculty Perspectives - Fall 2016
Get PDFThis issue features summaries of recent scholarship by Bernadette Atuahene, William Birdthistle, Sungjoon Cho, Henry H. Perritt, Jr. Also inside: an excerpt from a forthcoming article by A. Dan Tarlock.https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/fac_perspectives/1006/thumbnail.jp
“Relationality:” New Colors for the European Model of Constitutional Justice
No full text2016 Morris Lecturer Vittoria Barsotti, Chaired Professor of Comparative Law and Ph.D. Program Director, University of Florence School of Law, speaks on \u27Relationality\u27: New Colors for the European Model of Constitutional Justice.
Relationality is slowly becoming a new and positive feature of the continental European model of constitutional adjudication. This does not necessarily entail giving up national constitutional identity. A relational attitude, while favoring dialogue and cooperation, can also serve to defend national values and to help Constitutional Courts remain central within their own legal order. This, for example, is the case of the Italian Constitutional Court whose “style” has been defined as deeply “relational.” After a long period of resistance, the Italian system is now open and direct with other European judicial bodies. This openness is not focused on an unreasoned importation of judicial solutions from outside. It is rather a two-way relationship among peers, a dialogue that triggers constructive convergence but also leaves room for difference and distinctiveness.
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Guide to AC028 - Records of the Center for Access to Justice & Technology
Get PDFRecords of the Center for Access to Justice & Technology, 1990-2005
The Center for Access to Justice and Technology (CAJT), formerly Justice Web Collaboratory, was formed at Chicago-Kent in 1999. The CAJT worked to make justice more accessible to the public by promoting the use of the Internet in the teaching, practice, and public access to the law. The CAJT conducted research, built software tools, taught classes, and supported faculty, staff, and student projects on access to justice and technology.
The first major focus of the CAJT was Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants: A Consumer Based Approach, or the “Meeting the Needs” project. The project investigated barriers to access to justice facing self-represented litigants, applied system design methodology to redesign court processes, and built an Internet-based prototype for implementation by the courts. The first phase of the project began in August 2000 with a course taught by Professor Ron Staudt, the Justice Web Collaboratory Interprofessional Research Opportunity (IPRO). In the class, 13 law students from Chicago-Kent and 5 graduate design students from the IIT Institute of Design explored existing pro se assistance programs by observing the Chicago-Kent Advice Desk at the Richard J. Daley Center, and gathering information from litigants and courts in Cook and Lake Counties, Illinois; Delaware; Boulder County, Colorado; and Ventura County, California. Using data collected during the site visits, students identified the factors restricting access to justice and created solutions based on information structure, and finally constructed a communication document for their ideas to overcoming these factors. A second course in Systems Design and Structured Planning, taught by Charles Owen at the Institute of Design, began in January 2001, and consisted of 22 graduate-level students, including four law students from Chicago-Kent College of Law and 18 design students from the Institute of Design. In this second phase of the project, under the supervision of Professor Ron Staudt, Professor Charles Owen, and Edward B. Pedwell, the project team used the data gathered by the IPRO course and their own site visits to create the Access to Justice system. The full report on this project, Access to Justice: Meeting the Needs Of Self-Represented Litigants, was published in 2002 by Owen, Staudt, and Pedwell. The third and final phase of the project was the development of A2J Author, a software tool that enabled non-technical authors to create web-based interfaces for document assembly. The software was developed in partnership with the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) and launched in 2005. The CAJT continues to manage and promote A2J Author.
In 2003, an Illinois Joint Simplified Dissolution of Marriage Prototype (“JSDM Prototype” was created. The prototype was custom-designed software that provided a web-based interface for completion of the forms required for joint simplified dissolution of marriage in Illinois. In 2004, the Self-Help Web Center (SHWC), a help desk located on the 6th floor of the Circuit Court of Cook County at the Richard J. Daley Center, was created and launched. The SWHC serves as a starting point for pro se litigants and assists visitors in finding legal information and completing online legal forms.
Related collection(s): Records of the Center for Law and Computers, Records of the Illinois Technology Cente
Abuse of Supreme Court Precedent: The Historic Kinship
Get PDFIn Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, the Supreme Court applied a doctrine formulated for patent law to an issue arising in copyright law. The Court supplied a rationale for doing so by identifying a “historic kinship” between patent and copyright law based on fundamental goals of intellectual property law. The Court considered how the rationale applied in the particular factual context involved. The Court cautioned that the propriety of extending a doctrine developed in one intellectual property regime to another depends on the particular legal issue involved. Despite the importance of ensuring that new rules are consistent with the underlying rationale for intellectual property law and the Supreme Court’s cautionary language, lower courts regularly quote the “historic kinship” as a justification for applying rules from one regime to another. This article surveys all of the cases referring to Sony’s “historic kinship” and finds that most lower courts abuse the precedent by failing to consider the rationale and heed the caution. The risk created by this misapplication of Supreme Court precedent is that new intellectual property rules may be inconsistent with the underlying goals or inconsistent with other doctrine