Photo by Picography on Pexels.com By: Drew Carlson In late 2022, writer Chris Wozniak sued Warner Brothers, claiming that the 2022 hit film The Batman copied a comic book story he’d proposed thirty years prior. In a 45-page judicial opinion from March 27th, Judge Paul Engelmayer held that the recent movie had not infringed on Wozniak’s copyright and even declared that Wozniak infringed on DC’s copyrights by writing a Batman story. Was there infringement? If so, from whom? What’s the situation, Commissioner? In 2022, The Batman was released in theaters. Set in a corrupt and strife-filled Gotham ..read more

By: Bethany Butler Last month, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital successfully transplanted a genetically engineered pig kidney into a 64-year-old patient. Scientists removed porcine genes and added human genes via the CRISPR-Cas 9 gene editing technology. In total, sixty-nine of the pig’s genes were modified prior to transplantation. The surgery took approximately four hours, with the kidney functioning almost immediately after transplantation. eGenesis, a biotechnology company focused on genetically engineered, human-compatible organs, invented this procedure and the resulting geneti ..read more

By: Mayel Andres Tapia-Fregoso On March 21, 2024, Amazon Studios released its latest blockbuster film “Road House,” a remake of the original 1989 action classic. Following its launch on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming platform, the studio revealed that as of April 1, 2024, the film reached 50 million viewers. Yet, despite the film’s apparent success, Amazon’s Road House production has been filled with controversy. On February 27, 2024, R. Lance Hill, the writer of the original Road House (1989) screenplay, filed a lawsuit against Amazon Studios and its subsidiary MGM, alleging copyrigh ..read more

By: Bella Hood Wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried, otherwise known as “SBF”, was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $11 billion on March 28, 2024. A federal court convicted SBF in November on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit commodities and securities fraud. The former 32-year-old billionaire is the son of two Stanford law professors. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked at Jane Street Capital, a quantitative trading firm. FTX, an abbreviation of “Futures Exchange” was founded by SBF in 2018 as a cent ..read more

Photo by Thomas Laukat on Pexels.com By: Bethany Butler 2022 Olympic Women’s Singles Figure Skating Doping Controversy  The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing were overshadowed by an intense doping scandal in the women’s singles figure skating event. In February 2022, Kamila Valieva, a 15-year-old Russian figure skater (competing under the ROC “Russian Olympic Committee” due to Russia’s previous doping issues), participated in the Olympic figure skating team event. With the help of Valieva’s top scores, the ROC placed first in this event, followed by the United States in second, Japan in thi ..read more

By: Karina Paup Byrnes On March 24,2024, Washington’s State Governor, Jay Inslee, signed into law the “Strippers’ Bill of Rights” (SB 6105/ HB 2036), which provides adult dancers with increased safety protections in the workplace. Adult entertainers employed at strip clubs across Washington state are now legally entitled to safeguards such as keypad entrances to dressing rooms, panic buttons in private room where employees are alone with customers, mandatory sexual harassment training for all employees, and security guard staffing on site. However, this bill represents more than just a win fo ..read more

By: Kevin Vu Nintendo, the developer of various beloved video games and consoles, was recently in the news for its lawsuit against, and subsequent settlement with, Tropic Haze, the developers of the Nintendo Switch emulator “Yuzu.” In the initial complaint, Nintendo alleged that “[w]ith Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch, all without paying a dime to Nintendo or any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch. In effect, Yuzu turns general ..read more

Exploring Alternate Avenues to Patent Protection of AI-Designed Pharmaceuticals By: Anushka Parihar Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to revolutionize industries worldwide. A rapidly evolving application of AI is now emerging in the pharmaceutical industry, resulting in AI-designed pharmaceuticals.  Many businesses use AI and machine learning algorithms as a tool to sift through large databases of data to identify potential drug targets and design molecules that interact with those targets. AI is also utilized to promote the efficiency of clinical trials by predicting the efficacy o ..read more

Photo by Perfecto Capucine on Pexels.com By: Zachary Blinkinsop The opening chapter: COVID-19 and the National Emergency Library. With the COVID-19 lockdowns of early 2020 slamming library doors shut, students and researchers found themselves struggling to access critical educational materials. Libraries, like many institutions, scrambled to adapt to the unprecedent challenges posed by the pandemic.Many librarians responded by espousing the use of copyrighted materials in remote education and research. They cited the doctrine of fair use which protects certain unlicensed uses of copyrighted ma ..read more

Photo by Google DeepMind on Pexels.com By: Bethany Butler Gene editing technologies have the potential to greatly influence medicine and impact future therapies to treat debilitating conditions. Gene editing research seeks to “modify genes of living organisms to improve our understanding of gene function and develop ways to use it to treat genetic or acquired diseases.” One gene editing tool is the CRISPR/Cas-9 system, which allows for precision genome editing by cutting DNA in targeted locations for replacement. The first gene editing therapy utilizing CRISPR/Cas-9, called Casgevy, was approv ..read more