Posted: May 21st, 2017
By: Cara Van Dorn*| Staff Writer
Computers are learning to do more than drive cars and predict your next online purchase; they are learning to compose music, translate languages in real time, invest your money, diagnose disease, read MRIs and ultrasounds, and even perform surgeries. The possibilities are truly incredible. Many of the brightest minds in engineering, computer science, medicine, and finance are engaged in one of these fields through academia, startup companies, and big corporations such as IBM, Google, and Amazon. Regardless of the field or forum, the limiting factor to the success of any innovation is the same: access to data.
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Posted: May 12th, 2017
By: Katherine Escalante*| Staff Writer
At its core, CloudPets’s new toy brings a personal touch to a stuffed animal. A parent can send a recorded message through an app, which transmits through the stuffed animal, allowing your loved one to hear your voice. However, this personal touch may come at the cost of your personal information, passwords, and access to your voice. Like other toys that connect to the internet, this toy stores all that information in the cloud. With scammers developing new ways of attaining personal information, this purchase is surely something parents will have to think about twice before buying.
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Posted: May 2nd, 2017
By: Brandy Nickoloff*| Staff Writer
Moshik Nadav designer behind Moshik Nadav Typography brought suit against Cher in the Southern District of New York for unauthorized use of his “Paris Logo”. Nadav claimed that Cher, her label Warner Bros. Records and other defendants copied the artistic elements of the logo for Cher’s 2013 album Closer to the Truth.
Nadav has a passion for design and sees typography as a distilled form of design. He has described his work as typography that composes high-end, lush typefaces that perfectly suit any premium design. The Moshik Navdav website displays Nadav’s different typefaces which include Lingerie, Paris, and Paris Pro, among others. Visitors of the website are able to purchase the fonts for use through different types of licensing structures. The right to use the fonts is given directly through the website with the terms of use policy acting as a “binding legal agreement” between the Nadav LLC and the web user. Nowhere on the site is there any symbol or language amounting to a federal copyright.
U.S. copyright laws protect “original works of authorship” in categories such as writings, art work, and music. The copyright gives the owner the right to control the way his work is used by others. A copyright exists from the moment that an original work is created. Registration of the copyright is not required for protection, but is recommended because it creates a public record of the copyright, can create eligibility for statutory damages and attorney’s fees in successful litigation, and, if an infringement happens within the first five years of publication, it could be considered evidence of a prima facie case in court.
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Posted: April 23rd, 2017
By: Thomas Gaffney*| Staff Writer
On March 1, 2017, Maria Vullo, Superintendent of Financial Services for the Department of Financial Services in the state of New York, promulgated Part 500 of Title 23 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations of the State of New York, into law. This new regulation is more commonly referred to as the controversial NY state financial cybersecurity rule. Many financial institutions fought this rule vigorously because they view the bill as unprecedented, overly restrictive, and extremely costly for compliance.
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Posted: April 13th, 2017
By: Maria Pigna*| Staff Writer
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, commonly known as Coachella, is a three-day event known for its musical performances of top artists, delicious food, world-class art, and its celebrated commitment to sustainability. Aside from the global attention this event receives every year, it has given itself another reason to make headlines. Coachella filed a trademark lawsuit against Urban Outfitters in the U.S. Central District Court of California on March 14, 2017.
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Posted: April 9th, 2017
By: Cara Van Dorn*| Staff Writer
Trump’s recent address to Congress highlighted his pride in America’s status as the land of innovation and progress. However, very few of the innovations that America proudly claims would have been possible without immigrants: Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies have founders that are immigrants or the children of immigrants; 30% of American-based Nobel laureates were born outside of America; Immigrants founded 24% of US engineering and technology start-ups, 43% of start-ups based in Silicon Valley, and 20% of the Inc. 500 companies. Additionally, immigrants contributed to 60% of patent filings from innovative companies and authored more than 40% of the international patent applications filed by the US government.
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Posted: April 2nd, 2017
By: Katherine Escalante*| Staff Writer
On March 21, 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Lexmark International, Inc. v. Impression Products, Inc. relating to the doctrine of patent exhaustion. While the opinion is not yet available, the Supreme Court’s decision is expected to become a pivotal decision on the application of the patent exhaustion doctrine. The Supreme Court will review the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision finding: “(1) the first sale doctrine does not apply to patented articles sold subject to restrictions . . .; and (2) the first sale doctrine does not apply to patented articles sold outside of the United States.”
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Posted: March 31st, 2017
By: Brandy Nickoloff*| Staff Writer
By Stratos L – https://www.flickr.com/photos/10547107@N03/13872046044/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32193570
On January 12th, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) issued a notice of violation to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. and FCA US LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary thereof, for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act (“CAA”). The EPA claim asserts that the light-duty models year 2014, 2015, and 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokees and Dodge Ram 1500 trucks with 3.0 liter diesel engines are equipped with engine management software that was undisclosed to the EPA. The secretly installed software allowed more than 100,000 of Fiat Chrysler’s diesel vehicles to emit pollutants above legal levels. Continue reading »
Posted: March 29th, 2017
By: Jacky Brammer*| Staff Writer
Recent lawsuits filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Attorneys General of the states of Washington and Illinois allege that Navient, the nation’s largest servicer of student loans, used illegal and deceptive practices to trap students into higher repayment plans for longer periods of time than necessary. Navient denies any wrongdoing.
The most serious allegation is that, from January 2010 to March 2015, Navient based employee compensation in part on manipulating student borrowers into postponing payments through forbearance which cost students an extra $4 billion in unnecessary fees. In another example, Navient is accused of shouldering disabled veterans with poor credit reports due to improperly marking their loan discharges as defaults.
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