Diversity is a fundamental American value that only continues to grow.[1] World leaders have implemented diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices to build a more just society, but such practices may be forced to change significantly to conform to the modern legal landscape.[2] The Rooney Rule in the National Football League (NFL) is the latest employment policy to face legal scrutiny.[3] The Rooney Rule The Rooney Rule is an employment policy designed to increase the number of minority candidates hired in leadership positions in the League’s thirty-two member teams.[4] The NFL a ..read more

If one were to hear that a popular video game consisting of capturing animal-like creatures and, subsequently, using them to battle others in the world was one of the most popular releases of the year thus far, they would probably assume only one thing: Pokemon. But — perhaps surprisingly — the pop culture juggernaut and legendary video game series is not what is being discussed here. A New Challenger Approaches Indeed, that game is Palworld, a new title from an obscure Japanese indie studio named Pocketpair that was launched through early access on January 19, 2024.[1] The success of Palworld ..read more

The Vote On March 5, 2024, the Dartmouth Men’s Basketball team voted 13-2 to join Service Employees International Union Local 560, despite the objections from Dartmouth College.[1] A junior player who had been fighting for the team’s right to unionize emphasized that students can be, “both campus workers and union members.”[2] This vote was made possible by a surprising ruling from a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which deemed the Dartmouth players employees of the school within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), thus entitling them to unioni ..read more

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), there have been an increasing number of lawsuits against big tech companies over the use of copyrighted content in training AI models.[1] One of these “tech giants” is Nvidia.[2] Nvidia is currently being sued by a group of authors—Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian, and Stewart O’Nan—who allege that the company used their copyrighted works without permission to train its AI platform NeMo.[3] The authors’ works were included in a dataset of 196,640 books that were used to train NeMo to simulate ordinary written language.[4] The authors’ works at issue in ..read more

It’s been a long time coming for the United States government to start taking the dangers of deepfake technology more seriously, especially in regard to its use for nonconsensual pornography. When perpetrators recently targeted their latest victim, Miss Americana popstar Taylor Swift, they should have known better than to go after this beloved singer’s big Reputation. The explicit deepfake images first emerged at the end of January of this year.[1] The images depict lewd and sexual acts of Swift wearing NFL Kansas City Chiefs apparel in the Kansas City Stadium, purportedly in response to the r ..read more

Financial technology (“fintech”) offers consumers a flexible and efficient way to manage their finances.[1] Digital finance solutions are less costly than traditional financial services enhancing access to the financial market for underserved and underbanked populations.[2]. Over the last decade, the mass adoption of internet-enabled smartphones and improvements in data analytics and cloud computing have enabled innovators to disrupt the finance industry further.[3] In the last few years, regulators at the federal and state levels have raised concerns about the risks of fintech to consume ..read more

In late February of this year, the Biden administration confirmed it would move to extend the warrantless search program authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire in April 2024.[1] Section 702, which passed into law at the tail-end of the Bush Administration in 2008, authorizes the United States federal government to “conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States, with the compelled assistance of electronic communication service providers, to acquire foreign intelligence information.”[2] The law, a ..read more

Building on the momentum of half a dozen class action lawsuits filed against OpenAI by writers, The New York Times has taken up its own fight against both OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft. [1] Shortly before 2023 drew to an end, The Times filed a lawsuit against the Silicon Valley giants, alleging copyright infringement, unfair competition, and trademark dilution.[2] In addition to seeking monetary damages, The Times wants all GPT or other large language models and training sets that include its copyrighted work destroyed.[3] For its part, OpenAI said it was surprised and disappointed by the ..read more

Fashion, particularly fast fashion, is one industry that is notoriously known for generating massive amounts of waste and emitting pollution in the process.[1] According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the industry is the second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for 2–8% of all global carbon emissions.[2] The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported earlier this year that the world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature threshold within the next ten years, pushing the planet past the point of catastrophic warming.[3] The report, one of the most definitive r ..read more

The 30th Annual IPLJ Symposium Duplicate, Decolonize, Destroy: Current Topics in Art and Cultural Heritage Law Friday, October 7, 2022 9:30 – 10:00 a.m. | Check-in and Breakfast 10:00 – 10:15 a.m. | Welcome Remarks Matthew Diller, Dean and Paul Fuller Professor of Law, Fordham Law School Kayleigh Ristuben, Editor-in-Chief, Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal Eleanor R. Grasso, Symposium Editor, Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal 10:15 – 11:05 a.m. | Keynote Address Marilyn J. Mosby, Founder & Managing Partner, Mahogany ..read more