Immoral or Scandalous Marks: An Empirical Analysis
The Lanham Act sets forth which trademarks may be registered at the Patent and Trademark Office. It contains a number of limitations on registrability. Section 2(a) prohibits among other things…
Essay: What Remains of Fair Use for Software after Oracle v. Google?
Two recent decisions from the Federal Circuit in the long-running litigation between Oracle and Google have upended the scope of copyright protection afforded to software. In both decisions, the court…
I “Think,” Therefore I Create: Claiming Copyright in the Outputs of Algorithms
Artificial intelligence (AI) has often been viewed as either an ally or an adversary—a powerful analytical system to be harnessed or a source of risk to be managed. In copyright…
Speaking About Politics, A Fireable Offense? The Legality of Employee Speech Restrictions in the Entertainment Industry
Despite the commonly shared belief that Americans have an undeniable right to freedom of speech, private-sector employees receive no constitutional protection for employer regulations of or reactions to their speech…
Trademark Law in the Virtual Realism Landscape
The recent rise of virtual reality, augmented reality, and other related technologies has created vast amounts of virtual space. Within this space, novel forms of trademark infringement and expressive use…
EU’s New Copyright Directive: Will the U.S. Follow Suit?
The copyright directive that the European Parliament adopted in March (“the Directive”) won final approval from the European Council last month. Member states have two years to integrate its requirements…
The Impact of the GDPR
After four years of preparation and debate the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) was finally approved by the EU Parliament on April 14, 2016, coming in to effect on…
Supreme Court to Hear Case on AIA “Secret Sales.”
What is the America Invents Act (AIA)? The path to patentability has many obstacles, and inventors’ own actions sometimes stand in the way of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office…
Biometric Facial Recognition for Unlocking iPhone – Does it Violate the Fifth Amendment?
With the overwhelming numbers of criminal mischief, the government seems to seek resourceful leeway that may lead to the findings of valuable evidence in an investigation. Among all feasible scenarios,…
The Future of Biometric Data Privacy Law and BIPA
Biometric Technology Industry Biometrics encompasses a wide variety of technologies, which aim to identify a person’s identity based on unique, unchanging physical or behavioral characteristics. Biometric technologies include fingerprint recognition,…