In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, a group of six dating app users filed a class action lawsuit on February 14, 2024 against MatchGroup Inc. (“Match”), a parent company that owns several dating apps including Tinder, Hinge, and The League.[1] Filed in California federal court, the lawsuit alleges that the dating platforms are intentionally designed with game-like features to addict users and ensure continued subscription payment rather than help establish relationships as advertised.[2] The Plaintiffs, residing in California, New York, Georgia, and Florida, are suing Match for alleged violation ..read more

If you live on Earth and enjoy listening to music, you’re most likely familiar with Hall and Oates. Whether you listened to them in your youth or were introduced to “Rich Girl” through TikTok, Daryl Hall and John Oates were a pop duo for the ages. Perhaps this is why their current legal battle has baffled and saddened fans worldwide; here is a deep dive into the dispute and how it relates to shared intellectual property rights.   Daryl Hall filed a joint lawsuit and restraining order against former musical partner John Oates in November 2023.[1] Public court filings revealed that Oates at ..read more

Once a drug patent is approved by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the patentholder is essentially granted a monopoly on making, using, and selling that drug for about 20 years.[1] This exclusive reward is an interesting feature in US law contrasted with the typical American ethos that champions unrestrained competition. One rationalization is that this protected period of uninhibited profit may incentivize future inventors to develop groundbreaking, life-saving pharmaceuticals. Still, the need for innovation must be balanced against the need for affordable drugs. Brand-name drug ..read more

Copyright infringements are on the rise, as modern technology has made it increasingly easy and cheap for infringers to copy artists’ and authors’ original work and share these unauthorized copies widely without permission.[1] Unfortunately, the prospect of bringing a copyright claim in federal court for an individual artist or author without great financial means, time, or a legal education can be daunting, especially when the potential damages for the infringement are often lower than the expected cost of attorney’s fees. Expense, time, and procedural hurdles prevent many copyright holders f ..read more

In recent years, our roads have begun to see the introduction of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). The rise and interest in AVs have, in many ways, been seen as a means of achieving greater road safety. [1] Car accidents have frequently occurred with the traditional use of Conventional Vehicles (CVs) operated by human drivers.[2] The frequency of car accidents with CVs is primarily a result of human error.[3] Data from the NHSTA reports that 94% of car accidents result from human error.[4] AVs are a possible solution to the human error effect in accidents, as they can provide safety assistance to dri ..read more

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