By: Gabrielle Gravel On the heels of a global shutdown in the wake of COVID-19, courthouses all over the country turned to technology to keep their very full calendars in motion. The solution was to move the myriad of required hearings and in some cases, even jury trials, to the now commonplace Zoom platform. By moving court to Zoom, the judicial branch has been able to reduce foot traffic in normally packed courthouses and still meet the requirements of due process and equity. In this move, incarcerated defendants can “appear” in court via a webcam in the jailhouse, attorneys can represent th ..read more

By: Mikela Gassert Modifications to video games, typically called mods, are a staple of gaming communities. These derivative works are not always supported or authorized by the original game publishers. In the absence of a legal method to paywall mods, developers have turned to crowdsourcing tools to fund the upkeep or creation costs for mods. The ramifications of this practice are unclear. Publishers and mod creators may soon become caught between the desire to provide freedom to players and the need to protect intellectual property rights. This post explains why the uncertainty should be res ..read more

By: Shivani Patel While the right to be forgotten is an understood legal right in Europe and many other countries, it is also a right that does not align with the values of the United States, specifically our First Amendment values. With privacy laws becoming a more commonplace discussion, it seems that this is inevitable conversation. How do we in United States deal with the clash between our First Amendment rights and a potentially necessary right to be forgotten? In Europe, the right to be forgotten allows people to have search engines remove links or information about them. Are there not t ..read more

By: Eddy Atallah Since the inception of the Hatch-Waxman Amendments, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) determination for three-year clinical investigations exclusivity was generally unquestioned. However, Braeburn v. FDA brought about significant interpretive challenges to the provision and questions about agency deference. This Blog considers the “double-edged sword” in trying to mitigate ambiguity within the Hatch-Waxman act. This Blog proposes a legal and scientific standard that should suffice the Court’s new requirement over the exclusivity determination process, a standard already ..read more

By: Sam Hayes The Supreme Court left the government edicts doctrine untouched for nearly 130 years until last year, when the Court revisited the doctrine in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc. The central issue in Georgia v PRO concerned the copyrightability of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, which included the text of every Georgia statute, as well as various non-binding annotations. The Court concluded that the Code’s annotations were not copyrightable because they were authored by legislators who have the authority to make the law. Particularly, although the annotations were drafte ..read more

By: Raj Shah, Senior Regulatory Attorney & Policyholder Advisor, MagMutual Insurance Company & Nicholas Forsyth, Risk Intern, MagMutual Insurance Company This blog involves data protection and privacy law and addresses the difference in outcomes of the Georgia Supreme Court case of Collins and the 11th Circuit case of Captiva. The work discusses whether Georgia law and the 11th Circuit have different pleading standards in a class action regarding negligence in a data breach. The work lays out the probable future implications these two court cases will have on healthcare organizations l ..read more

By: Tyler Dysart The sports apparel market is plagued by counterfeit products that reproduce athletic teams’ trademarks at a fraction of the cost. This problem is catalyzed by exclusive licensing deals granted to manufacturers by sports teams, which drive up costs of these officially licensed goods and in turn forcing many consumers to go to black market websites to purchase apparel. This dichotomy is due to the unique nature of sports trademarks, whose purpose is not to inform consumers about the source of the good, but merely used to inform others about the consumers themselves – that they s ..read more

By: Marcus McGinnis Within the twelve months prior to publication of this blog, changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA") enforcement protocols on Twitch have created an unsustainable environment for creators on the platform who are subject to a set of draconian pre-Web 2.0 laws that stifle content creation efforts through unfair copyright enforcement mechanisms. The issue lies mostly in how the DMCA incentivizes online service providers to "expeditiously" handle licensing issues. This approach has led to creator's having to delete entire backlogs based on claims that would ..read more

By: Gabrielle Gravel When the world stood still in March 2020[1], courthouses all over the nation had to keep their dockets moving.[2] The grand solution was to turn court into one big video chat, where everyone—even unaffiliated onlookers—would have equal access. The widely used Zoom platform allows meeting hosts to livestream directly to YouTube.[3] Anyone in the world with internet access can tune into bond hearings in Georgia or a probation calendar call in Kansas. While the option of moving in-person proceedings to a virtual format can be even more convenient to the conventional model, th ..read more

By: Mikela Gassert Introduction             If a movie contains a boring scene, a viewer may fast forward through it using a remote. If a book lacks a satisfying ending, readers are free to write a new one. If a video game lacks some key detail or accessibility feature, players can develop modifications, called mods, to resolve the problem.[1] Unlike the other two options for improving a consumer’s entertainment experience, modifying a video game title requires greater technical knowledge and time investment. As a result, mod creators will ..read more