By Talia Loucks
This past season of South Park featured an episode entitled “You’re Not Yelping” where Yelp reviewers took over the town, putting folks out of business with their bad reviews. As always, South Park provided a humorous commentary on the current issue many companies face: one or two negative reviews can severely damage business. Many businesses have come up with a way to combat this: anti-disparagement clauses. Continue reading
By Brennen Johnson
The fight is back on between Apple and the FBI over encryption technology. In June 2014, we first covered Apple’s move to encrypt iOS 8 phones that could stump even the FBI. But the FBI wasn’t happy about it. Last November, we covered how the FBI sought a court order to force Apple to develop a method for breaking the encryption on these phones with “brute force.” However, the phone in that case ran older software that Apple could simply unlock, iOS 5, so the FBI wasn’t able to use the case as a stepping-stone to win the fight over encryption.
But as of last Tuesday, February 16, the heat turned up when a Federal Magistrate Judge ordered Apple to provide the FBI with software and technical support to help crack an iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Authorities recovered the iOS 9 phone after a married couple, Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others last December. After the judge issued the order, Apple CEO Tim Cook called the order a “dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties,” while other tech giants, like Google, stated their own support for Apple: Continue reading
By Vijay Kumar
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) recently decided en banc that Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, which prohibits registration of “disparaging” trademarks, is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The effects of this significant decision (In re Tam) will undoubtedly ripple across multiple industries and affect many controversial trademarks, including most notably the Washington Redskins, who are currently appealing a district court decision to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Continue reading
By Michael Huggins
On October 26, 2015, the United States government argued before a federal magistrate judge in New York that it should be able to force Apple to unlock an iPhone as part of a criminal investigation. The federal government filed a request for a court order to compel Apple to comply pursuant to the All Writs Act— an 18th Century law that allows federal courts to issue orders to effectuate otherwise valid court orders. The government argues that the federal courts can use the All Writs Act to force Apple to assist the government in investigating users of the software. Apple refuses to comply with the order.
Apple argues that the situation would not be any different than if the government used the All Writs Act to force a safe manufacturer to travel around the country, unlock safes, and give the contents of those safes to the government. Apple argues that the government wants Apple to do the investigative work for them. Judge James Orenstein, the federal magistrate judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, agreed with Apple’s logic. Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy believes that Apple’s refusal to unlock the phone represents a surprising reversal from Apple’s previous willingness to unlock phones for the government. When Judge Orenstein asked Apple why it did not challenge the previous search warrants, Apple’s attorney Marc Zwillinger replied that the company had only recently become more cognizant of the harms to high-profile data breaches and that the company has had a change of heart. But even if Apple was willing to unlock the phone, it cannot do so because each individual contains a very specific password/key to unlock the phone. Continue reading
By Nicholas Ulrich
The recent outbreak of measles in some states has caused many to question our present vaccination polices. Vaccinations are old as far as medical technology is concerned. Scientists created the first smallpox vaccine over two centuries ago, and mandatory vaccination requirements started cropping up as the nineteenth century progressed. Today, all states have some form of vaccination policy with regard to measles. Some states, however, allow broad exception for personal or religious reasons. One New York Times contributor, KJ Dell’Antonia, recently argued that states should do away with these exceptions. She stated broadly that the Supreme Court had already ruled that mandatory vaccination polices are constitutional. However, whether states can do away with religious exceptions is more complicated. Last month the Second Circuit issued an opinion in Phillips v. City of New York, dealing with the New York vaccination requirement, which sheds some light on how courts today will treat this question.
The Supreme Court first dealt with a vaccination requirement in 1905 in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. Massachusetts had a policy requiring a small pox vaccination during an outbreak. Jacobson refused to take the vaccine. He claimed that he had taken the vaccine as a child and became seriously ill. The state fined him, pursuant to the statute, and he challenged the fine. The Supreme Court issued a very broad opinion stating that regulation of a public health concern of the state was well within the state’s police powers. However, the Court did not consider the issue under the First Amendment, because the Court did not apply the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause to the states until 1940. Continue reading
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts 