Technology Law – Page 6 – Boston College IPTF Journal

2017 Technology Law

Liability of Tesla’s Autopilot System Under California Tort Law

Jamin Xu On September 19, 2016, the U.S. Department of Transportation (“DOT”) published federal policy guidelines on automated vehicles in which it expressed its support for the development of autonomous vehicles and stated the potential of autonomous vehicles to drastically improve people’s safety and mobility. In order to address safety concerns, the Department released guidelines instructing states to close the gap between regulations that govern human-driven vehicles from self-driving ones by allocating tort liability among Highly Automated Vehicle (“HAV”) owners, operators, passengers, manufacturers and others when a crash occurs, while providing very little guidance in doing so. This approach encourages...

FTC Social Media Endorsement Guidelines: The Effects on Social Media Users and Business Owners

Jason Kim In the midst of heydays of social media, a social media user will inevitably face a product or service endorsement post in his/her social media feed or thread page. However, in the endorsement post, it is quite rare to see disclosure information as to whether the social media endorser has some kind of commercial relationship with the product manufacturer or service provider. On September 7, 2017 the FTC issued its first ever legal action against individual social media endorsers for posting endorsement posts without revealing their commercial relationship with the service providing company. This action by the FTC...

2017 Technology Law

ISP Regulation and Antitrust: The Case for Better Competition

David Yangli Wang This Note firstly discusses net neutrality and ISP regulations broadly– do we see it as a commerce issue, a government regulation issue, a data fairness issue, or even a human rights issue? And if we decide that ISPs must be regulated, what type of antitrust regulation will be most effective? This Note takes a comparative look at Internet regulations around the world, examining both the development of broadband infrastructures and the antitrust laws (or lack thereof) of such countries. This Note ultimately concludes that the current antitrust regime in the United States will not be able to...

2016 Healthcare Law Technology Law

Data Exclusivity for Biologic Drugs: The TPP’s Potential Poison Pill?

Tina Cheung On October 5, 2015, after many years of secretive negotiations, the US government with 11 other countries across the Asia Pacific and Latin America reached an agreement on the largest free-trade deal in history, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Addressing everything from wildlife conservation and tax reductions for agriculture, to the free flow of information on the Internet and intellectual-property rights for movies and pharmaceutical drugs, this far-reaching agreement has the potential to impact up to one-third of world trade. One of the most contentious parts of the agreement involves intellectual property rights of pharma companies to data exclusivity...

2016 Technology Law

Equine Cloning: An Investigation of Legality and Prospects

Charlotte Yates Historically, equine breeders strove to produce the best competition horse, by selecting two talented horses to breed. Technological advances, like artificial insemination allowed for horses in different locations to be bred. Now, cloning allows the genetic material of a talented horse to be identically copied in creating one, or multiple offspring Currently, it is unclear what the impact cloning will have on equine sports both legally and athletically. Read Full Text Here

2016 Technology Law

Reform of H-1B Visas

Jamin Xu Originally, H-1B visas were intended to allow United States (hereinafter “U.S.”) employers to address shortages of skilled labor in the workplace by temporarily hiring highly skilled foreign workers only when they are unable to obtain employees with needed skills from the U.S. workforce. In the 1990’s, Congress raised the initial cap of 65,000 H-1B visas a year to 115,000 for fiscal years 1999 to 2000, and to 107,500 for fiscal year 2001 to address a shortage of computer science specialists, but there is now a growing number of U.S. workers who are highly skilled in science, technology, engineering,...

2015 Technology Law

Obama’s Broadband Plan

Ben Agatston This July, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), an administrative office within the Executive Office of the President, published a report that highlighted the “digital divide.” Most notably, the report found that a large number of Americans do not use a computer and “substantial disparities in both Internet use and quality of access.” By exploring Figure 3 of the Council of Economic Adviser’s report, “Mapping the Digital Divide,” it becomes clear that rural areas lag behind more densely populated, urban regions. Read Full Text Here

2015 Healthcare Law Technology Law

Telemedicine & the Courts: Teladoc v. Texas Medical Board as a Case Study

Mary Delsener Today, health insurance companies such as Aetna and United Healthcare have partnered with telemedicine companies in order to provide the service for its members. Teladoc, Inc., which markets itself as the first and largest telehealth provider in the United States, is one such company. Of all of business generated by Teladoc’s 11.5 million members, one quarter comes from Texas. Over the course of the past year, however, Teladoc’s ability to continue its services in the state has been on legally tenuous ground due to repeated steps taken by the Texas Medical Board to oust the company from its...

2015 Healthcare Law Technology Law

Telemedicine’s Opportunities and Risks; A Balancing Act

Robert Park Obstacles that can complicate successful implementation of telemedicine are the legal ramifications. Legal complications can include fraud and abuse, patient confidentiality, and compliance with state requirements. Violation of patient care can result in heavy fines, and in telemedicine, a recent case involving the Texas Medical Board and a Telemedicine company could heat up within the coming months. Because of these obstacles, healthcare organizations face an arduous journey to getting reimbursed for implementing telemedicine. Read Full Text Here

2013 Technology Law

Keep an I on the Sky: E-Discovery Risks Forecasted for Apple’s iCloud

Daniel Carmeli Some things have not changed since the fire of March 14, 1873. The competing interests of clients seeking convenient storage on one side against providers seeking protection from liability on the other continue to pervade the legal landscape. Naturally, some things have changed, such as the items being stored, the nature of the storage facilities, the associated risks, and the rules governing preservation obligations. Physical property has been replaced with electronically stored information (“ESI”) and warehouses now take the form of remote data servers. And in addition to longstanding conventional risks, such as accidental fire, companies now face...

Category: Technology Law