Issues and developments related to IP, AI, and OM, examined in the IP and tech ethics graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. My Bloomsbury book "Ethics, Information, and Technology" will be published in January 2026 and includes chapters on IP, AI, OM, and other emerging technologies (IoT, drones, robots, autonomous vehicles, VR/AR).
Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Contract negotiations relating to the processing of personal data of EU individuals
Discovery in litigation in the U.S.
Client support to organizations with a footprint in the EU
Sponsor(s): Section of Litigation; Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section; Center for Professional Development Panelist(s): Melia Archie (Legal Counsel, Data Privacy Director, Stryker); David Manek (Director, GDPR Practice Leader, Navigant); and Camila Tobón (Of Counsel, Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP)
Jan Wolfe, Reuters; IBM settles legal dispute with diversity officer hired by Microsoft "International Business Machines Corp on Monday said it settled a trade secrets lawsuit it brought against its former chief diversity officer who left for a similar job at Microsoft Corp. The settlement allows Lindsay-Rae McIntyre to begin working at Microsoft in July."
Kirsten Thompson, Comic Book Resources; Pepe the Frog Artist Suing InfoWars for Copyright Infringement "The lawsuit specifically cites a poster that pictures Pepe in the company of President Donald Trump, InfoWars founder Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Roger Stone, Matt Drudge and Milo Yiannopoulous (among others) and the text “MAGA,” which refers to Trump’s presidential campaign slogan. Furie claims that InfoWars is selling this poster in its online store, though he did not authorize such use of the character. The complaint can beread herein its entirety."
Earlier this year, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, in partnership with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), announced the 2018 class of inductees.
These visionary innovators each patented inventions that revolutionized their industries and changed people’s lives. Of the fifteen new inductees, five will be honored posthumously.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame was established in 1973 by the USPTO and honors monumental individuals who have contributed great technological and scientific achievements and helped stimulate growth for our nation and beyond. The criteria for induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame requires candidates to hold a U.S. patent that has contributed significantly to the nation's welfare and the advancement of science and the useful arts. The inductees are honored at the National Inventors Hall of Fame museum located in the Madison Building on the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia.
"CBS and Paramount are unlikely to see things the same way. WhileStar Trek: Discovery press releasestrumpet the “ideology and hope for the future that inspired a generation of dreamers and doers,”plans for streaming market dominationdepend upon exclusivity. The metaphor equating artistic expression and property has become so ingrained that companies regularlyreduce their consumers to provisional licensees, subject to whatever controls the copyright holder decides upon, even long after the point of purchase. “Star Trekstands on the shoulders of giants. It exists because they plundered some of the most interesting stories and memes of science fiction, just as all science fiction writers do, to tell their own story. And to argue that when they did it that was the legitimate progress of art and whenever anyone else does it, it's theft, is pretty self-serving and kind of obviously bullshit,” Doctorow said. “It's a ridiculous thing for a law to ban something that ancient and fundamental to how we experience art.” Countering the monopoly exercised by copyright holders will require a broader social realignment, under which people come to understand art as a shared cultural endowment, rather than product—a mindset beyond capital."
Nicole Brown, amNewYork; Manhattan teen cartoonist prompts review of Scholastic awards’ copyright rules "“How come the @Scholastic @artandwriting award requires kids to sign over ‘irrevocable copyright’ if they win?! And why is it hidden in the ‘Terms & Conditions’ link that no one reads? Is it weird that I think that’s wrong?” [Sasha Matthews] wrote in December... ...[T]he ability to display the work could be granted through a license, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig said. “Once you enter into a license to promote the work, you have all the permissions you need,” he told amNewYork. “That’s exactly what they could have done here, but rather than entering a license, they just grabbed the copyright.” Matthews wrote about the copyright issue for a school assignment and got itpublished in February on the blog Boing Boing."
The need to protect intellectual property in China is a concern that all brand owners, innovators, content creators, and artists should take into consideration. Join IP attorney Scott Palmer as he advises companies and in-house attorneys on protecting and enforcing intellectual property, and taking advantage of recent developments in China.
Our distinguished panelist will discuss:
Recent developments of note in the IPR space
Establishing and perfecting your rights in China
Selecting the best course of action—administrative, judicial, and/or criminal recourse
Warning letters and negotiating with infringers
Obtaining injunctions and claiming monetary damages through litigation
Evidence issues, procedural peculiarities, and best practices for litigating IPRs in China
Reuters via New York Times; Adidas Prevails in ‘Three Stripes’ Trademark Case "A European court has sided with the German sporting goods maker Adidas on Thursday in its long-running attempt to block two trademarks for parallel stripes on shoes filed by a Belgian footwear company, saying they infringed on its own iconic three-stripe design."
Adam Stone, Government Technology; Are Open Data Efforts Working? "Data managers say that in their fondest dreams, they’ll do more than count data sets and track clicks. They are looking for metrics that connect open data to social outcomes. Are babies healthier because of open data? Are streets safer? That’s the holy grail of open data metrics, and data chiefs from cities large and small agree that we’re not there yet. In these still-early days of open data, there’s no algorithm that will cleanly and clearly describe the impact of open data on society at large. “There needs to be more conversation at the national level about how to measure success, especially on the public side,” Roche said. “Maybe there needs to be a standard set of metrics across cities to let us benchmark the use of open data. It’s something we all need to be exploring.”"
BBC; Elon Musk quits AI ethics research group "Technology billionaire Elon Musk has quit the board of the research group he co-founded to look into the ethics of artificial intelligence. In a blog post,OpenAI said the decision had been taken to avoid any conflict of interest as Mr Musk's electric car company, Tesla, became "more focused on AI". He has been one of AI's most vocal critics, stressing the potential harms."
Jessica Abo, Entrepreneur; How to Protect Your Intellectual Property "If you’re just starting your business, it’s important to protect your assets. Jessica Abosat down with Scott Sisun of Sisun Law to help you understand what marks you need and how to protect them."
Ingrid Angulo, CNBC; Forget tariffs, China's alleged intellectual property theft a bigger threat to market: Analyst "Trump has said in the pastthat he's considering a big fine as part of the probe into China's alleged theft. While Trump did not specify what he meant by a "fine" against China, the 1974 trade law that authorized an investigation into China's alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property allows him to impose retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods or other trade sanctions until China changes its policies. If the Chinese are found guilty, [chief investment strategist at ClearBridge Investments Jeffrey] Schulze fears that the nation will retaliate."
Echo Huang, Quartz; China has shot far ahead of the US on deep-learning patents "China is outdoing the US in some kinds of AI-related intellectual property, according toa report publishedin mid-February by US business research firm CB Insights. The number of patents with the words “artificial intelligence” and “deep learning” published in China has grown faster than those published in the US, particularly in 2017, the firm found. Publication is a step that comes after applications are filed but before a patent is granted. The firm looked at data from the European patent office. When it comes todeep learning—an advanced subset of machine learning, whichuses algorithms to identify complex patternsin large amounts of data—China has six times more patent publications than the US,noted the report(pdf, p.7)... ...[W]hen it comes to patents using the term “machine learning,” often conflated with the term AI, China still lags behind. Searching patents for “machine learning” found the US had 882 related patent publications while China had 77 in 2017."
William New, Intellectual Property Watch; Professor Tells UN, Governments Of Coming “Tsunami” Of Data And Artificial Intelligence "[Prof. Shmuel (Mooly) Eden of the University of Haifa, Israel] said this fourth revolution in human history is made up of four factors. First, computing power is at levels that were unimaginable. This power is what makes artificial intelligence now possible. The smartphone in your hand has 1,000 times the components of the first rocket to the moon, he said, which led to a chorus of “wows” from the audience. Second is big data. Every time you speak on the phone or go on the internet, someone records it, he said. The amount of data is unlimited. Eden said he would be surprised if we use 2 percent of the data we generate, but in the future “we will.” Third is artificial intelligence (AI). No one could analyse all of that data, so AI came into play. Fourth is robots. He noted that they don’t always look like human forms. Most robots are just software doing some function... Eden ended by quoting a hero of his, former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who told him: “Technology without ethics is evil. Ethics without technology is poverty. That’s why we have to combine the two.”
Eden challenged the governments, the UN and all others to think about how to address this rapid change and come up with ideas.
He challenged the governments, the UN and all others to think about how to address this rapid change and come up with ideas. Exponentially."
"Federico Muyshondt is accused of stealing details of Dannon’s business strategies, plans for future products and customer lists before resigning in January to take a position with Chobani, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in White Plains, New York. The suit illustrates how competitive the yogurt business has become and highlights the proliferation in the corporate world of non-compete clauses in workers’ contracts that restrain them from going to work for rival employers. Just last week, International Business Machines Corp. called foul on Microsoft Corp.’s hiring of its former chief diversity officer in a case that elevated the recruiting and promotion of a diverse workforce to the level of protecting proprietary technology."
John Perritano, How Stuff Works; Nearly Every English Word Is Trademarked "The two professors, Barton Beebe and Jeanne C. Fromer, looked at the 6.7 million trademark applications filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office between 2003 and 2016. They then studied a database of the 100,000 most frequently used words in American English — the Corpus of Contemporary American English. They also reviewed a U.S. Census list of the 151,672 most frequently occurring surnames in the United States.
What they found will knock your socks off, which, by the way is also trademarked. "The data present compelling evidence of substantial word-mark depletion," they write in the Feb. 9, 2018 issue of the Harvard Law Review, "particularly with respect to the sets of potential marks that businesses prefer most: standard English words, short neologisms that are pronounceable by English speakers and common American surnames."...
The result of so many trademarks is that new businesses have to strain their noggins (yes, variations of "noggin" are already taken) to come up with monikers that aren't already claimed, or resort to what's called a "parallel registration." That's when two companies use the exact same name as long as it won't confuse consumers (for example, Delta Faucets and Delta Airlines)."
Nardine Saad and Christie D'Zurilla, Los Angeles Times; Oscar contender 'The Shape of Water' facing copyright infringement lawsuit "Fox Searchlight, Guillermo del Toro and others associated with the Oscar contender "The Shape of Water" are facing a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Zindel."
The number of claims heard by IPEC last year reached a record high... “Growing numbers of technology companies, in particular, are using the court, as IP will often represent their most valuable asset,” it states."
Ed Silverman, STAT; Allergan is dealt another setback as patent board shoots down Mohawk patent deal "In a closely watched case, a U.S. patent appeals board ruled that a Native American tribe cannot claim sovereign immunity in order to avoid a certain type of patent challenge. The decision is a blow to Allergan (AGN), which last fall transferred patent rights to one of its biggest-selling medicines to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe in hopes of thwarting generic competition. Procedurally, Allergan sought to avoid inter partes reviews, a type of patent challenge that has vexed drug makers since going into effect six years ago, because these are easier and faster to file than patent lawsuits. At the time it transferred patent rights to its Restasis eye treatment, which last year generated more than $1.4 billion in sales, Allergan was facing a conventional patent challenge in a federal court."
Minda Zetlin, Inc.; Patent Trolls Target Small Businesses With Lawsuit Threats. Here's How One Startup Fought Back "Why are they targeting small businesses? For years, these entities made their money by suing or threatening to sue large corporations with deep pockets. This worked well because they could take advantage of the rule that companies can be sued anywhere they do business, and large companies tend to do business in every state. Patent trolls found a fewfederal court districtswhere they had greater odds of winning. From their point of view, life was good. But in May 2017, the Supreme Court issued arulingthat companies could only be sued for patent infringement in the state where they reside. That made collecting much harder for patent assertion entities. Many turned their attention to small companies and startups for which the cost of defending a patent case could pose an existential threat. They began sending letters containing a simple proposition: Pay us a (relatively reasonable) one-time fee and we'll sell you a permanent license and drop our planned lawsuit."
Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); When the Copyright Office Meets, the Future Needs a Seat at the Table "Every three years, EFF's lawyers spend weeks huddling in their offices, composing carefully worded pleas we hope will persuade the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress to grant Americans a modest, temporary permission to use our own property in ways that are already legal. Yeah, we think that's weird, too. But it's been than way ever since 1998, when Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whose Section 1201 established a ban on tampering with "access controls for copyrighted works" (also known as "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM"). It doesn't matter if you want to do something absolutely legitimate, something that there is no law against -- if you have to bypass DRM to do it, it's not allowed. What's more, if someone wants to provide you with a tool to get around the DRM, they could face up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine, for a first offense, even if the tool is only ever used to accomplish legal, legitimate ends."
Ina Fried, Axios; Apple looks to patent yoga calorie counting "Ever wonder how many calories you are burning doing yoga? Well Apple has applied for a patent for a way to do just that... Standard patent disclaimer: Patents represent an idea that a company has but don't always mean something is coming to market."
Bernard Knight, IPWatchdog; 6 Core Values and 5 Emotional Intelligence Skills Leading to Sound Ethical Decisions "Ethical conduct is required in all jobs and by all organizations. It also applies to positions at all levels. Anyone can disagree with a substantive business or legal decision, but make an ethical mistake and your company, firm or individual career could be in jeopardy. I explain below some excellent tools to avoid ethical missteps... This article discusses how you can use core values and emotional intelligence skills to avoid ethical mishaps. These skills are easy to gain and can save you from an unintended ethical mishap. For more on the importance of emotional intelligence, see my prior IPWatchdog article."
