Troubling Trends in the Federal Criminal Justice System

In his terrific Hallows Lecture yesterday evening, former U.S. District Judge Mark Filip criticized a number of recent trends in the federal criminal justice system, including the use of return-on-investment measures of law enforcement success and the requirement that corporations suspected of wrongdoing retain costly compliance monitors.  Audio of the Lecture is now available here.  We expect to post the text of Judge Filip’s remarks and additional commentary in the next few days.

Continue ReadingTroubling Trends in the Federal Criminal Justice System

New Issue of Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review Is Here

On behalf of the staff of the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review, I am pleased to announce the arrival of the first issue of volume fourteen, available now in print and online.

This issue highlights the work of several scholars.  Dr. Dana Beldiman, a partner with the law firm of Carroll, Burdick & McDonough LLP in San Francisco, examines of the concept of originality within the context of the “knowledge based economy” in her article, “Utilitarian Information Works — Is Originality the Proper Lens?” 

Jay Dratler, Jr., Goodyear Professor of Intellectual Property at the University of Akron School of Law, offers an insightful revision of patent law in “Fixing Our Broken Patent System.” In this article, Professor Dratler incorporates never-before-codified principles of judge-made law into an improved statutory scheme that recognizes invention as a commercial and economic process, discourages patents on abstract research, and places the focus of patent law on practical economic and commercial criteria.

This issue also continues our Emerging Scholars Series with an article by César Ramirez-Montes, intellectual property lecturer at the University of Leeds, U.K. 

Continue ReadingNew Issue of Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review Is Here

Supreme Court Takes Public Employee Informational Privacy Case

4United States Supreme Court 112904 The United States Supreme Court granted cert today in the public employee privacy case of NASA v. Nelson, No. 09-530 (petition for cert here). The case will consider whether NASA, a federal agency, violated the informational privacy rights of employees, who worked in non-sensitive contract jobs, by asking certain invasive questions during background investigations.

General Kagan, for the government, filed the petition for cert and is asking the Court to overturn the 9th Circuit decision which directed a district court to issue a preliminary injunction on behalf of contract workers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) operated by the California Institute of Technology under a contract with the federal government.  The General maintains that the privacy expectations of the employees are minimal because they have are in the government employment context, these are standard background forms that the government is using, and the Privacy Act of 1974 protects this information from disclosure to the public.

The case was originally brought in 2007 by twenty-eight scientists and engineers employed as contractors at JPL on behalf of a potential class of 9,000 employees that NASA classifies as low-risk employees. Questions included in the background check ask about “any treatment or counseling” for illegal drug use, and forms issued to references seek “adverse information” about the workers’ employment, residence, and activities regarding violations of the law, financial integrity, abuse of alcohol or drugs, mental or emotional stability, general behavior, and “other matters.”

This will be an interesting case for a number of reasons.

Continue ReadingSupreme Court Takes Public Employee Informational Privacy Case