Abstract Jurisprudence in the area of defining patent scope is opaque and inconsistent. District courts and litigants cannot be certain of the bounds of the exclusive territory covered by a patent—defined by the patent’s claims—until the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—the single patent appellate court in the nation—says what it is in an appeal after final judgement. The appellate court appears to simply redo the analysis of the district courts, yet often inexplicably reaches a different conclusion based… Read More

Abstract Video game “decompilations”—a potentially technically inaccurate term referring to fan efforts to entirely reprogram video games based on reverse engineering those games—present an interesting case study for evaluating the scope of video game copyrightability, fair use, and public expectations about content availability. Decompilations usually comprise entirely new code and do not comprise any assets of the original video game, suggesting that the decompilations, if viewed as mere code, do not apparently infringe any video game copyrights. That said, decompilations… Read More

Introduction The movement for accountable algorithms has attained critical mass. That momentum includes a range of areas where the collection of data plays a key role, including privacy, online disinformation, surveillance, and screening for credit, housing, employment, and government benefits. For example, the White House has released an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bill of Rights that outlines standards and recourse for a host of AI applications that touch human needs and endeavors. Assessments, disclosure, and procedures for filing complaints about abuse are… Read More