Drone Law 101

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimates that almost 2.5 million unmanned aerial systems, more commonly known as drones, will be purchased in 2016, and that annual sales will reach almost 7 million units by 2020.  Drones have been or soon will be employed in an ever-broadening dronesphere of applications, including photography, natural resource mapping and management, hobbyist flying, military and police applications, and perhaps even package delivery.  But as with many fast-emerging technologies, governance regimes have not kept pace with science.  As a result, many of these millions of purchasers have at least one thing in common: uncertainty over how their flying activities are regulated.

On Friday, April 8, the Environmental Law Society hosted a discussion of the future of drone regulation at the federal and state levels, featuring three experts: Russ Klingaman, who teaches Aviation Law and is a licensed pilot; Eric Compas, a UW-Whitewater professor and drone enthusiast who has received grant funding to investigate the use of drones for natural resource and disaster recovery purposes; and Detective Eric Draeger of the Milwaukee Police Department.  In a wide-ranging discussion, the panelists agreed that legal regimes governing drones are constantly evolving.  They grouped the top legal challenges related to drones into three categories: safety, privacy, and security.

Continue ReadingDrone Law 101

Congratulations to the 2016 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 2016 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition, Amardeep (Simi) Singh and Sara McNamara. Congratulations also go to finalists Samuel Draver and Alan Mazzulla, who additionally won the Franz C. Eschweiler Prize for Best Brief.  Simi Singh won the Ramon A. Klitzke Prize for Best Oralist.

The competitors argued before a large audience in the Appellate Courtroom. Presiding over the final round were Hon. Diane Sykes, Hon. Brett Kavanaugh, and Hon. Gary Feinerman.

Many thanks to the judges and competitors for their hard work, enthusiasm, and sportsmanship in all the rounds of competition, as well as to the moot court executive board and Law School administration and staff for their work in putting on the event. Special thanks to Dean Kearney for his support of the competition.  Thank you as well to the Moot Court Association for its work in putting this event together, and especially 3L executive board members Larissa Dallman and Andrew Otto.

Students are selected to participate in the competition based on their success in the fall Appellate Writing and Advocacy class at the Law School.

Here is a link to the final round video.

Continue ReadingCongratulations to the 2016 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition Winners

Silicon Valley’s Challenge to Intellectual Property Law

 

Ted Ullyot titled his Helen Wilson Nies Lecture at Marquette Law School on Tuesday, “Innovation, Disruption, and Intellectual Property: A View from Silicon Valley.” He made it clear which two of those three elements are looked on favorably within that bastion of high-tech culture: innovation and disruption. That leaves one not looked on so favorably: intellectual property law, if you define that as protecting creative work through patents, copyrights, or trademarks.

Ullyot has gained great insight into what goes on between technological visionaries on one side and corporate lawyers on the other. From 2008 to 2013, he was general counsel of Facebook. That covered a period in which Facebook grew at an amazing pace, its stock went public, and it was sued by Yahoo! for patent infringement. Ullyot described the Yahoo! case in detail in his lecture, including the way that many of the leading figures in Silicon Valley who had no connection to Facebook were rubbed wrong by the Yahoo! suit because the culture of innovation was so oriented against asserting intellectual property rights.

Continue ReadingSilicon Valley’s Challenge to Intellectual Property Law