Technology

University of Pennsylvania offers a boot camp on brain science

Phoenix public defender Ingrid Miller has been hearing a lot about neuroscience in the courtroom and wanted to know how much of it was hype. So she signed up for Neuroscience Boot Camp, a 10-day crash course on the brain run by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Neuroscience &…

Dec 1, 2013 10:20 AM CST

Carriers nix proposed ‘kill switch’ solution to problem of rampant smartphone thefts

Throughout the United States, almost one in every three robberies involves the theft of a telephone, often a pricey smartphone. Yet the industry has rejected a proposal by the biggest cellphone maker, Samsung Electronics, to equip mobile phones with “kill switch” software that would allow the devices to be shut…

Nov 20, 2013 7:05 PM CST

Were women convicted in ‘ritual abuse panic’? Junk science law aids their release

Three women who were convicted of sexually abusing two girls have been released from prison, thanks to a new “junk science” law in Texas. The women were accused of abuse in 1994 at a time of headline-making ritualistic abuse cases. They were released on bond on Monday through a deal…

Nov 19, 2013 4:57 PM CST

What will 3-D printing do to IP Law? Manufacturing? Product liability?

Legal and technology analysts see a host of changes on the horizon as a result of 3-D printing technology. Intellectual property “will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce,” said John Hornick, a Washington, D.C.-based IP attorney with Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, at a…

Sep 20, 2013 8:14 PM CDT

5-lawyer tech, media and telecom group exits Dow Lohnes for Sutherland Asbill

A five-lawyer group with a tech, media and telecommunications focus has leapt from Dow Lohnes to the Washington, D.C., office of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. It includes partners William “Bill” S. Dudzinsky Jr., Michael A. Hepburn and Paul R. Lang; counsel Meredith O’Leary; and senior attorney Andrea Gehman, their new…

Sep 19, 2013 5:30 PM CDT

Facebook exchange threatens murder conviction

A juror’s Facebook message to a prosecution witness during trial threatens to derail a Tennessee man’s first-degree murder conviction. The Tennessee Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling (PDF) Tuesday, ordered the trial court to conduct a hearing into whether the communication warrants a new trial, CNN reports. “If, for any…

Sep 12, 2013 10:11 PM CDT

FTC examines Facebook’s facial-recognition feature as a privacy violation

Facebook’s “Tag Suggest,” which uses facial-recognition technology to match faces in photos with users’ names, is being examined by the Federal Trade Commission to determine whether it violates the site’s privacy policy. Tag Suggest drew criticism from privacy advocates, Reuters reports. In 2011, Facebook entered into an agreement with the…

Sep 12, 2013 5:01 PM CDT

Bite-mark evidence should be allowed in murder case, says state judge

A jury will be allowed to hear bite-mark evidence that may tie a suspected murderer to his alleged victim, a New York judge ruled on Thursday. Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley said bite-mark analysis comports with the standards of evidence under state law, the Associated Press reports. Wiley…

Sep 9, 2013 7:20 PM CDT

Chemerinsky: Paradox in drug injury cases must be solved by Congress, says SCOTUS

In June 2013, for the third time in four years, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with the question of when federal law preempts state tort liability for those injured by prescription drugs. What emerges from these cases is a strange distinction: Those who take the brand name version and are…

Sep 4, 2013 2:10 PM CDT

Crime labs under the microscope after a string of shoddy, suspect and fraudulent results

In January, the New York City medical examiner’s office confirmed that it was reviewing more than 800 rape cases from a 10-year period during which DNA evidence may have been mishandled by a lab technician who resigned in 2011 after an internal review uncovered problems with her work. The review,…

Sep 1, 2013 10:20 AM CDT

Record industry tussles over whether a resale market for online music violates the Copyright Act

When computer science professor Larry Rudolph and entrepreneur John Ossenmacher launched the online company ReDigi in late 2011, they promised that the service would offer people something missing from the market: a legal means for consumers to sell their old digital music files. ReDigi’s system allows people to upload old…

Aug 1, 2013 8:20 AM CDT

DNA from arrested suspects is like any valid booking process, SCOTUS says

At February’s oral argument in Maryland v. King, about whether the police may take samples of DNA from people arrested for certain crimes, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said it was “perhaps the most important criminal procedure case this court has heard in decades.” He suggested that such DNA swabs…

Aug 1, 2013 8:00 AM CDT

IP firm holds the lead in the flourishing field of design patent litigation

Consumers are becoming more interested in the appearance of things they buy, which has led to a dramatic increase in the number of design patent applications. Design patents are distinguished from utility patents because the design patent protects a product’s unique external appearance, while the utility patent protects the way…

Aug 1, 2013 6:50 AM CDT

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office adopts ethics guidelines that closely follow the ABA Model Rules

On May 3, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office put a new set of ethics rules into effect. The new rules have drawn some criticism from attorneys, but at least no one can accuse the PTO of acting in undue haste. The PTO’s new Rules of Professional Conduct replace a…

Jul 1, 2013 8:10 AM CDT

Could NSA surveillance help an accused bank robbery conspirator? His lawyer thinks so

The lawyer for a Florida man accused in a series of bank robbery attempts says phone records collected by the National Security Agency could prove his client wasn’t at one of the crime sites. The lawyer, Marshall Dore Louis, has filed a motion for NSA records on phones used by…

Jun 13, 2013 1:49 PM CDT