Are Patents on Interfaces Impeding Interoperability?
By Pamela Samuelson. Full text here. Commentators and policymakers have frequently expressed serious concerns about the exclusionary potency of patents on communications protocols and interface designs for information and communications technologies (ICT). Among the proposed policy responses to potential harms arising from the exercise of such interface patents are excluding interfaces from patent protection, immunizing use…
Continue ReadingThe Anticompetitive Effects of Underenforced Invalid Patents
By Christopher R. Leslie. Full text here. Courts and scholars have long debated the proper balance between antitrust law and intellectual property rights. Proponents of strong intellectual property rights and those of vigilant antitrust enforcement often find themselves at opposite ends of the debate. Some scholars and intellectual property owners resist the encroachment of antitrust law…
Continue ReadingAn Anti-Authoritarian Constitution? Four Notes
By Patrick O. Gudridge. Full text here.
Continue ReadingAdaptive Federalism: The Case Against Reallocating Environmental Regulatory Authority
By David E. Adelman & Kirsten H. Engel. Full text here. A hallmark of environmental federalism is that neither federal nor state governments limit themselves to what many legal scholars have deemed to be their appropriate domains. The federal government regulates local issues, such as remediation of contaminated industrial sites, while state and local governments develop…
Continue ReadingThe Accountable Executive
By Heidi Kitrosser. Full text here.
Continue ReadingNote: Capturing the Ghost: Expanding Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 to Solve Procedural Concerns with Ghostwriting
By Jeffrey P. Justman. Full text here. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have not kept pace with the ways in which some lawyers are representing low-income litigants. For example, in its current form, Rule 11 only recognizes traditional “full scope” representation and purely pro se representation, without addressing the ever-increasing possibility that lawyers may represent…
Continue ReadingNote: Between the Possible and the Probable: Defining the Plausibility Standard After Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal
By Nicholas Tymoczko. Full text here. After fifty years of clarity and continuity, pleading standards are now the subject of confusion and debate. In 2007, the Supreme Court, in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, replaced Conley v. Gibson’s “no set of facts” standard with the plausibility standard, under which a complaint must contain enough factual allegations…
Continue ReadingNote: The Curious Case of Disparate Impact Under the ADEA: Reversing the Theory's Development into Obsolescence
By R. Henry Pfutzenreuter IV. Full text here. The present state of the economy places the nation’s older worker in a perilous situation. Employers, motivated by either the appearance of economic incentives or age-related stereotypes, are apt to seek savings in cost via large-scale reductions-in-force. The factors relied upon in executing these internal restructurings often serve…
Continue ReadingNote: From the Inside Out: Reforming State and Local Prostitution Enforcement to Combat Sex Trafficking in the United States and Abroad
By Moira Heiges. Full text here. Over the past eight years, federal and state governments have passed anti-trafficking laws and spent millions of dollars to combat sex trafficking. However, as evidenced by the minimal rate of convictions and the continually expanding sex trafficking market, these policies have not achieved proportionate results. This Note argues that without…
Continue ReadingClawbacks: Prospective Contract Measures in an Era of Excessive Executive Compensation and Ponzi Schemes
By Miriam A. Cherry & Jarrod Wong. Full text here. In the spring of 2009, public outcry erupted over the multi-million dollar bonuses paid to AIG executives even as the company was receiving TARP funds. Various measures were proposed in response, including a ninety percent retroactive tax on the bonuses, which the media described as a “clawback.”…
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