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By Min Choi • October 16th, 2012

In the old days – and even now, as Occupy Wall Street exemplifies – people took to the streets to protest. But as technology evolved, new forms of demonstrations appeared. One such form is hacking to pursue political ends – hack-activism, or hactivism. A famous example of a hactivist group is Anonymous, whose attacks on [...]

Patent Battles and Reform Efforts in the United States The New York Times reports that Apple is using its patents as a sword against iPhone competitors, including Google’s Motorola Mobility. Google’s executive chairman says that the Google-Apple patent battle has lowered prices for consumers, but is killing innovation. Meanwhile, David Drummond, the chief legal officer [...]

Philippines Top Court Suspends Cybercrime Law Last week, the Philippines Legislature passed the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. The statute was aimed at deterring a wide variety of cybercrimes including hacking, distribution of child pornography, identity theft and libel. Amidst public concern that the law could be an illegitimate restriction of free speech, particularly due [...]

As the New York Times reports, other countries are leading the way to implement new regulations on high-frequency electronic trading while regulators in the U.S. have been “slow to act.” In my view, that may not be such a bad thing. High-frequency trading (HFT) refers to algorithm-driven, computerized strategies that allow traders to move from [...]

This post examines legal and regulatory issues facing the adoption of cloud computing in the financial services industry. While cloud computing has given the companies that use it the ability to operate more efficiently at reduced cost, the financial services industry has been slow to adopt this technology because of different state, federal, international, and [...]

NYC Campus Receives A US Patent Officer This past Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce and Cornell University announced that a patent officer will be assigned to the new Cornell NYC Tech School set open in January. The school will be run by Cornell and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and will admit approximately 20 [...]

Google Can Test Its Driverless Cars in California A new law in California allows Google’s cars on the road, as long as there is a driver inside ready to take control. This license to Google to test their cars comes on the heels of similar legislation in Nevada. A reporter from CNN test-drove Google’s car, [...]

Crowdsourcing Patent Analysis – A Team Effort The USPTO, Google, and Stack Exchange have teamed up to crowdsource patent analysis and expand the scope of access in areas like software patents. For the first time in the history of American patent law, the USPTO is inviting third parties to submit relevant materials to patent examiners. [...]

A Key Battle in the Apple v. Samsung Patent War Draws to a Close: Over the course of the summer, what has arguably been the patent “trial of the century” has unfolded in Judge Lucy Koh’s courtoom. This week, the trial entered its final stage, when Judge Koh made special preparations to read the epic [...]

Facebook Goes Public, Becomes More Democratic: Facebook made lots of news in May when it finally became a publicly-traded company. Now, in addition to eventual shareholder votes, the company is opening itself up to even more voting. This past week Facebook put certain privacy changes to a user vote. It remains to be seen whether [...]