When designing intellectual property laws, the struggle inherent in legislating is designing a law that will ensure that creators and inventors have adequate incentives to continue revealing new knowledge to the public while also not overly limiting the public’s ability to interact with prior works or express their own useful ideas. This balance has been …
Adults who smoke have been compensated for negative health effects of smoking, when the side effects of smoking were not fully and properly explained. An adult who doesn’t follow a safety label on a piece of heavy equipment because it is not noticeable enough can bring a lawsuit if they are injured when using that …
News broke last week that that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) provided the personal information of 2.3 million natural disaster survivors to a contractor working for the agency’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance program. The individuals whose information was exposed included survivors of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the 2017 California wildfires. The contractor to …
The Patriots and the Rams weren’t the only ones going butting heads this past Super Bowl. As many of us have likely seen through one medium or another, back in February Bud Light aired a ballsy ad during this year’s Super Bowl, and the target was brewing mega-corp MillerCoors. The spot, called Special Delivery, depicts …
Facebook recently announced the use of new technology to prevent the sharing of non-consensual intimate images, most commonly referred to as “revenge porn.” Facebook will now use “machine learning and artificial intelligence” to “proactively detect near nude images or videos that are shared without permission on Facebook or Instagram,” according to the company’s Global Head …
It has been 18 years since the European Union (EU) developed an EU-wide copyright law platform. Following implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, EU lawmakers began working on new regulations within intellectual property. Of the 24 articles in its new copyright directive, Article 13 has caused the most controversy. Article 13, …
On February 28, 2019, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice signed Senate Bill 267 which requires the state’s Board of Education to adopt and fund a policy describing the computer science instruction students receive at each grade level in K-12 schools. This move by Governor Justice makes West Virginia the first state to require a computer …
On March 15 the FCC voted to advance a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“FNPRM”) that would require wireless carriers to provide more accurate location data for emergency calls. Under the proposed rules, wireless carriers would have to give first responders three-dimensional location data instead of two-dimensional location data as currently required. Commissioners acknowledged that …
Once I told a friend that Wyoming was a place in the United States where innovative laws and legal practices were implemented and eventually accepted by the entire country. He thought I was joking. He only believed me after I explained the surprising history of the Limited Liability Company, how a form of business which …
New nuclear technologies such as Small Modular Reactors, advanced fission, and nuclear fusion are currently being developed to make nuclear energy safer and more efficient. The engineers of these technologies along with many scientists concerned about climate change believe that this “new nuclear” is likely to be a huge part of a carbon-free energy future. …
