PATENTS, PRIVACY, PODCASTS OH MY! | Justices Look At Patent Review Process Today, Whistleblower Laws Tomorrow, Digital Privacy Wednesday
November 27, 2017
YESTERDAY WAS NATIONAL CAKE DAY
|So to celebrate, USA Today’s Richard Wolf delivers a preview of the upcoming cake case out of Colorado involving a local “cake artist” who refused to serve a gay couple. As Wolf puts it, the case will debate “the expressive content of a wedding cake” and “test the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech and religion against state laws prohibiting discrimination.”
PATENTLY A BIG DEAL
|Justices today will hear arguments on whether or not to put an end to a system that lets companies go to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to challenge patents rather than having to rely on courts to do so. At a lower cost than filing a lawsuit, this review system is widely popular among tech companies and retailers that often get sued. Susan Decker with Bloomberg examines the case which has the potential to completely upend the patent review process in this country.
DO YOU WANT THE 4-1-1?
|Jeff John Roberts with Forbes delivers a rundown on today’s big patent case which he says could “topple a major pillar of the current patent system and send economic ripples through the tech and retail sectors.” Find out everything you need to know about the Oil States case along with a prediction for how the justices might eventually rule on it.
YOU CAN BET ON IT
|In The Washington Post, Robert Barnes takes a look at next month’s Supreme Court case that could “be a dam burst” for sports betting in America. As Barnes reports, the underground sports betting economy is at stake, which is said to be worth at least $150 billion a year and as much as $400 billion.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|“How hard should it be for the police to get hold of reams of data showing every place you’ve been for months?” The Editorial Board of The New York Times considers this question that the justices will have to answer on Wednesday of this week.
ANOTHA ONE
|The Editorial Board with the Los Angeles Times also weighed in on Wednesday’s SCOTUS case writing, “If the court is serious about protecting privacy in the digital age, it will rule that the government indeed violated TIMOTHY CARPENTER’S constitutional rights. In doing so, it will have to overrule as outdated a nearly 40-year-old decision that allowed investigators to obtain personal information about suspects from third parties without a warrant.”
FOR THE HAT TRICK
|The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal is also talking about the Supreme Court, examining today’s case — Oil States Energy v. Greene’s Energy — that could become a landmark decision for the nation’s patent review process.
GET LOW WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOW
|Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the scope of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act, which aimed to encourage whistle-blowers and prevent the kind of retaliation seen against those who tried to sound an alarm at Lehman Bros. and other firms that collapsed during the Great Recession. David Savage with the Los Angeles Times reports on the case which will meet some serious challenges from the “textualist” contingent of the court now that JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH is on the bench.
PODCAST DU JOUR
|“The Daily” — a podcast presented by The New York Times — takes a look today at the Supreme Court’s upcoming case involving digital privacy and cell phone records. ADAM LIPTAK who covers the high court joins the podcast for the discussion.
FIRST MONDAYS
|The podcast “First Mondays” — presented by SCOTUSblog — unpacks this week’s big Fourth Amendment case involving cell phone data, with ORIN KERR joining the pod to discuss his amicus brief arguing that the government should win the case.
SCOTUS VIEWS
The Supreme Court's Privacy Precedent Is Outdated
The Washington Post“Sotomayor is right. The Supreme Court should develop a modern Fourth Amendment doctrine. Such a test would recognize the legitimate claims of law enforcement but set objective boundaries — such as the duration of an intrusion or the nature of the data seized — that constrain those claims. The Carpenter case is the court’s opportunity to do so.”
Supreme Court Cellphone Case Puts Free Speech – Not Just Privacy – At Risk
The Guardian“In assessing whether Carpenter had a right to privacy in his location information, the court should consider what will remain of these indispensable democratic freedoms if the government is afforded access, without close judicial supervision, to the information that cellphone providers are continuously collecting about all of us, and to the other sensitive and even intimate records that all of us passively and routinely share with third parties.”