Yearly Archives: 2016

Contemporary consumer privacy law in the United States is largely based on the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs). These FIPPs are conceptually challenged by the “Internet of Things,” the digital ecosystem where sensors embedded in everyday physical objects – from watches and shoes to refrigerators and roads – communicate with ...

If privacy policies are meant to secure informed consent from consumers before their personal data is collected, several studies have shown that they have failed. Consumers do not know what privacy policies are, often because they either do not read them or they cannot understand them. This creates a conundrum ...

In the United States, the unreasonably high price of college textbooks does more than encourage a futile “arms race” with students; it reveals troublesome failures in the market and in the copyright system. Increased Prices A few months ago, the American Enterprise Institute announced the “new era of the $400 ...

Cyber-crimes, such as data breaches and cyber-attacks, have posed a constant threat to the United States Government and its citizens in the post-Snowden era. A study suggests that in 2015 a total of 58 cyber-attacks occurred on US companies, which marked a significant increase from the previous year. The average cost per attack ...

On February 3, 2016 a federal jury returned a verdict finding Apple guilty for willfully infringing four VirnetX Inc. patents in its products, including Apple’s VPN on Demand, iMessage and FaceTime. Apple was ordered to pay $625.6 million in damages and ongoing royalties. Following the verdict, Apple filed a motion for ...

Uber is facing a class-action lawsuit brought by drivers who claim that they have been misclassified as independent contractors rather than as employees. The distinction between contractor and employee is significant. Drivers classified as employees would need to be paid in accordance with state wage and hour laws, reimbursed for ...

Transparent. Accessible. User friendly. Many of the key principles that serve as the foundation for inclusive elections resonate strongly with the startup community. In order to foster joint discussion and problem solving, the brought together lawyers, technologists, policy wonks, and investors for “Moving Politics to the Web: How Technology Can ...

Apple is opposing an order by a federal magistrate judge to help the FBI unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters of the San Bernardino attacks. A judge ordered the tech giant to break into the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook. ...

Those “who sweat in the clammy gymnasia of patent law” were impatiently waiting for the Alice decision. They thought they would get an answer to the question of whether or not software is patentable. In its June 19, 2014 ruling, the Supreme Court held that the patentability turned on a ...

In May 2015, Mylan Pharmaceuticals appealed to the Third Circuit after the lower court dismissed its case against Warner Chilcott, which was predicated on a practice called product-hopping. While we await the ruling which is due to come later this year, here is some background information on the developing area ...