On August 1, 2017, the Bitcoin blockchain experienced a hard fork. The hard fork, spurred by concerns over Bitcoin’s scalability, resulted in an entirely new blockchain and an accompanying new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin Cash. However, the new blockchain relies on the history of transactions recorded on the old blockchain. Consequently, at the time of the hard …
The Sixth Circuit’s recent decision in Signature Management Team LLC v. Doe addressed an issue of first impression in digital privacy law, finding that anonymous internet defendants do not automatically forfeit their First Amendment right to anonymity once they are found liable in a civil lawsuit. The court’s recognition that the right to anonymity can …
Debate over pretrial detention began long before ratification of the Eighth Amendment, tracing its roots to the early English bail system. Despite this, approaches to the system have largely remained stagnant since passage of the Bail Reform Act of 1984, which contains a series of procedural directives that model bailsetting practices for the majority of …
This Recent Development examines the state of the law and opinions surrounding whether an initial coin offering (ICO) constitutes an offering of securities under federal securities laws. The SEC has taken the position that each offering will be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, looking at the facts and circumstances of each offering. The number of …
Rising interest in biometrics—the modern umbrella term for physical and behavioral characteristics possessed by humans and used to identify one another—has motivated large technology companies to produce products that allow consumers to access vital information using only their unique biometric identifiers. Because biometric information is unique to each person on the planet, it is a …
Many companies, particularly in the Gig Economy, have been the target of lawsuits alleging that they have misclassified workers as independent contractors rather than employees. These issues often present bet-the-company litigation, with billions of dollars and the companies’ very business models at stake. Although there is near-universal recognition that the division of workers into two …
In copyright law, the author of an original work has the exclusive right to prepare further works derivative of that original. Video game developers’ works are protected by the Copyright Act. As video games take advantage of more advanced technology, however, players are doing more creative, interesting, and original things when they play games. Certain …
Human colonization of the planet Mars is not a question of “if” but rather of “when,” or “how soon?” The challenges ahead are immense but so too are the perceived benefits. This article addresses an aspect that, thus far, has been largely unexamined: the interaction between intellectual property laws on Earth and the mammoth Mars …
Society has long enjoyed the benefits of medical advances. In numerous cases, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical (biopharmaceutical) industries build on knowledge accumulated over centuries by traditional communities. As in the case of aspirin and morphine, the use of this knowledge has reduced the time and cost it takes to develop new drugs. Despite the community’s …
This Article reconsiders the drugs-for-the-developing world debate that has taken place in the shadow of free trade liberalization. For the last twenty years, this debate has centered on a supposedly zero-sum conflict between access to drugs for residents of the “third world” and incentives for pharmaceutical multinationals to invest in research and development. Underlying this …
