Tuesday, November 5, 2013, by Britton Lewis It has been said time and time again that the only sure things in life are death and taxes, but I’d stipulate there is a third certainty—online shopping—and it appears that two of those certainties may be on a collision course before the Supreme Court. Online shopping through …
Tuesday, November 5, 2013, by Gabriel Kussin The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that environmental protection organizations in Washington State do not have standing to sue the state agencies responsible for enforcing the Federal Clean Air Act. The case focused on Washington’s lack of restrictions on oil refineries located in within the state …
Thursday, October 31, 2013, by Matthew Henry Following the national security revelation made by Edward Snowden last summer, attention quickly turned to the means in which he transmitted the information. Snowden had used an email service known as Lavabit. Ledar Levinson founded Lavabit in 2004. Whereas similar services utilized advertisements, Lavabit charged a modest yearly …
Thursday, October 31, 2013, by Stella Kreilkamp This week, Ohio prison officials announced that Ronald Phillips, convicted of raping and killing a 3-year-old girl, would be executed with a combination of two drugs never before used in an execution. Ohio plans on using the untested combination of a sedative, midazolam, and a painkiller, hydromorphone, because …
Tuesday, October 29, 2013, by Brittany Croom A judge for the District Court of North California recently granted a motion for class action certification that will allow employees of tech giants Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar to move forward with a lawsuit to recover alleged damages. The lawsuit, brought by employees of …
Tuesday, October 29. 2013, by Rory Fleming It has been long established that the direct infringement of a patent does not require knowledge of that patent or intent to infringe. It is up to the developers of new products to check the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s patent database before releasing their products out into …
Thursday, October 24, 2013, by Kyle Evans On Tuesday, the Third Circuit issued a ruling that requires law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant for GPS tracking. This case, United States v. Katzin, is the most recent to address privacy rights and GPS tracking since the Supreme Court held that using long-term GPS surveillance to …
Thursday, October 24, 2013 by Natalie Deyneka In what is may be an enormous relief for parents all over California, Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill No. 568, affectionately known as the “Eraser Bill,” into law last month. The law will take effect starting January 1, 2015. Why the relief? For one thing, the bill …
Thursday, October 24, 2013, by Keta Desai The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has reached a settlement in its first action against a debt collector for attempting to collect debts in an unlawful way through the use of text messages. The FTC brought suit against Archie Donovan and his two debt collecting agencies. The defendant companies …
Tuesday, October 22, 2013, by Daniel Choo When the framers of the Constitution explicitly gave Congress the power to establish a national patent system, there is little doubt that they did so with every bit of good intention. After all, the importance of providing inventors with temporary exclusionary rights over their inventions had been recognized …