Sorry for the overdose of IP law recently, I plan to return to local-government topics ASAP. But my recent article discussing criminal enforcement of copyright caused me to wonder about why patent infringement is not a crime in the United States (aside from falsely asserting a product is patented or forging the seldom-used “letters patent”). …
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My perspicacious coauthor and I recently accepted an offer from the North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology to publish our article “Criminal Copyright Enforcement Against Filesharing Services,” which I mentioned here last week. In honor of that, I’d like to share the introduction of the article, sans footnotes: In January 2012 an elite squad …
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“Big Data”— the business-world buzzword for the collection and analysis of massive amounts of data—has caught on with local government officials in the past few years as many cities have developed extensive data portals providing citizens access to heaps of public information like data from 311 calls. And its not only local governments getting involved, …
Along with a coauthor, I’ve written an article about criminal enforcement actions against filesharing services, including the ongoing prosecution of the operators of Megaupload. The article also touches on the actions against the Pirate Bay and NinjaVideo. This area of law is important in defining how the federal government protects creators of copyrighted content without …
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Three more states have applied for waivers from federal education guidelines: Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Texas. Add them to the 34 states (and the District of Columbia) that have obtained waivers and 10 other pending requests, plus the local California school districts that recently applied. As noted by Michele McNeil at Education Week, this “leaves just three states …
I’m just catching up on a swarm of recent cases filed against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS), the privately owned mortgage registry that has, for some time now, been used by the mortgage industry in lieu of municipal recording systems (which were generally voluntary anyway). Gretchen Morgenson described the rationale for MERS in 2009: …
As I noted in an earlier post, theories of federalism support a greater “polyphony” of state and federal input on education policy. That is, education policy and reform works best when both state and federal government can voice objectives and concerns. In my article, An Increased Role for the Department of Education in Addressing Federalism Concerns, …
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Our electronic age has decidedly outdated our courts’ go-to analyses for questions about the Fourth Amendment, leaving courts to reach for nondigital analogs for new technology. In my opinion, this reaching has produced some shaky results, leading to unclear guidelines for local police officers. To demonstrate, I present in no particular order three of the most-questionable …
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A recent article in the Southtown Star estimates that it cost Will County (on the Southside of Chicago) nearly $600,000 to obtain the high-profile murder convictions of Drew Peterson and Christopher Vaugh. Some of the charges were for evidence that wasn’t even used: since 2009, the county paid $75 per month for a storage locker to house the …
The FCC has issued new rules for cell-signal boosting devices. Because these devices use the same spectrum as normal cell signals, the cellphone industry was very concerned that these devices would hurt their services to regular users. Thus, creating these new rules took many years. But as the head of boosting-device-manufacturer Wilson Electronics explained to …
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