The Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts (LTA Journal) has published its Winter 2013 Issue. The LTA Journal publishes concise legal analysis aimed at practicing attorneys on a quarterly basis. This quarter’s edition includes two articles by student members of the LTA Journal and two articles by legal practitioners. 

The issue’s first article is “What Your Tweet Doesn’t Say: Twitter, Non-Content Data, and the Stored Communications Act,” written by 2012-2013 Associate Editor-in-Chief Daniel Shickich. This article discusses a recent federal district court decision which held Twitter users have no privacy rights regarding non-content information associated with their use of Twitter. The article examines the court’s Stored Communications Act and Fourth Amendment analyses and discusses the impact of expanded warrantless disclosures of non-content electronic records.

J.C. Lundberg, 2012-2013 Associate Editor-in-Chief, contributed “When Is a Phone a Computer?.” This article compares what constitutes a computer for federal sentencing guidelines with the law federal courts apply in determining whether a mobile phone is a computer for search and seizure purposes.

Practicing attorneys Daniel B. Garrie and Yoav M. Griver coauthored the third article, “Unchaining E-Discovery in the Patent Courts.” This article analyzes the Federal Circuit’s Model Order Regarding E-Discovery in Patent Cases (the “Model Order”). The article briefly describes the purpose behind the Model Order, describes its key provisions, analyzes the Model Order to identify some areas of continuing concern, and defines predictive coding to examine the impact, or lack thereof, on the Model Order.

Attorney and UW Law Intellectual Property Law and Policy LL.M. graduate Kristen L. Burge contributed the final article. Her article, “Personalized Medicine, Genetic Exceptionalism, and the Rule of Law: An Analysis of the Prevailing Justification for Invalidating BRCA1/2 Patents in Association of Molecular Pathology v. USPTO,”  analyzes the district court’s incorporation of genetic exceptionalism into the Patent Act in Association of Molecular Pathology v. USPTO (“Myriad”) and further examines the case through the lens of genetic exceptionalism.