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Digest Reports

Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act

By Cynthia Ahmed – Edited by Falicia Elenberg
Posted on April 23, 2021
H.R.2426 — CASE Act of 2019 Full Text of Bill; GovTrack.us Summary On October 22, 2019, the House passed the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act. In December 2020, the CASE Act was included as part of an omnibus COVID-19 Relief Bill, which was signed into law on December 27, 2020. The CASE Act created a three-judge tribunal, the Copyright Claims Board (CCB), within the U.S. Copyright Office to attend to small copyright claims. Two out of the three board members are required to be attorneys with substantial experience in copyright infringement claims. The bill was originally introduced by Rep. Jeffries, Hakeem S. [D-NY-8] on May 1, 2019. According to a press release by the Republican members of the...
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Copyright Reports
France.com, Inc. v. The French Republic: Fourth Circuit Holds France Immune From Trademark Infringement Claims

By Jess Tong – Edited by Vandana Apte
Posted on April 11, 2021 France.com, Inc. v. The French Republic, No. 20-1016 (4th Cir. Mar. 25, 2021) On March 25, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the French Republic was entitled to sovereign immunity against France.com, Inc.’s trademark infringement suit, reversing the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Fourth Circuit first stated that sovereign immunity...
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Reports Trademark
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club: Impact on the scope of the Freedom of Information Act

By Cynthia Ahmed – Edited by Jackson Xu
Posted on April 05, 2021 United States Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club, Inc. The Supreme Court held on March 4 that the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) deliberative process privilege exemption protects federal agencies’ draft biological opinions prepared pursuant to the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) that are “predecisional and deliberative,” from public eyes. In doing so, the court noted for the purpose of...
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Reports
Tah v. Global Witness Publishing, Inc.: D.C. Circuit Dissent in Defamation Case Urges Overruling of NYT v. Sullivan

By Natalie Tsang – Edited by Bella Berkley
Posted on April 04, 2021 Tah v. Global Witness Publishing, Inc., No. 19-7132 (D.C. Cir. Mar. 19, 2021). Complaint hosted by CourtListener. District Court opinion hosted by Justia. Last week, in Tah v. Global Witness Publishing, Inc., the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia affirmed the rulings of the District of Columbia District Court. The case arose from a report titled Catch me...
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Reports First Amendment
Alleged Neo-Nazis Lose First Amendment Challenge to Anti-Riot Act in Ninth Circuit

By Adam Toobin – Edited by Justin Cho
Posted on April 04, 2021 United States v. Rundo, No. 19-50189 (9th Cir. 2021) The First Amendment does not bar the prosecution of three alleged neo-Nazis for violations of the federal Anti-Riot Act, according to a recent ruling from the Ninth Circuit. The three-judge panel reversed the district court’s ruling, which had struck down the 1968 statute as unconstitutionally overbroad. The indictments themselves emerged out...
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Reports First Amendment
What is the future of Reddit after meme stocks fever?

By Sudheer Poluru – Edited by Carlos A. Pérez-Garzón
Posted on April 04, 2021 In the investing world, it is common to hear the terms growth stocks and value stocks. Now, a third category is gaining popularity: meme stocks. Meme stocks generally (1) “trade more on hype than its underlying fundamentals” and (2) are “popular with millennial-aged retail traders.” In recent months, retail traders on Reddit forums were at the center of huge swings...
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Reports
Taylor Swift’s Battle with a Fantasy Theme Park over her new album "Evermore"

By Cynthia Ahmed – Edited by Nathan Truong
Posted on April 01, 2021 Evermore Park, a fantasy theme park built to immerse its customers in a “European hamlet of imagination”, opened its operations in Utah in 2018. Subsequently, in December 2020, Taylor Swift released an album titled Evermore. Although Swift’s album brought the artist success with sales of over 1 million copies during its first week of release and further established Swift as...
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Reports
Waiving IP Rights to Address Global Vaccine Inequality

By Justin Cho - Edited by William Locke
Posted on March 29, 2021 In light of the glaring disparity in COVID-19 vaccine supply between rich and poor countries, India and South Africa introduced a controversial proposal to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in October 2020. Backed by many developing countries with few or no vaccine doses, the proposal asks the WTO to allow member countries to waive intellectual property rights related to COVID-1...
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Reports
Eighth Circuit: State Law Forbidding Government Contractors from Boycotting Israel is Unconstitutional

By Amre Metwally — Edited by Aris Hadjipanteli
Posted on March 22, 2021 Arkansas Times LP v. Waldrip, No. 19-1378 (8th Cir. Feb. 12, 2021), opinion hosted by USCourts.gov. Anti-boycott laws are nothing new in the United States—roughly 27 states have already enacted restrictions that seek to minimize activities that boycott Israel. The content of the legislation varies by state, though the measures can include requiring government contractors to “certify” that they will...
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Reports First Amendment
Microsoft email hack affecting 30,000 still an active threat

By Mary Rhauline Torres — Edited by Savely Zakharenko
Posted on March 16, 2021 A hack of Microsoft (MS) Exchange email servers, used by government and business customers worldwide, is considered to still be an ongoing threat despite already affecting 250,000 organizations worldwide, including 30,000 in the U.S. alone. Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center believes that Hafnium, a hacking group based out of China and purportedly sponsored by the Chinese government, is responsible for the...
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Cybersecurity Reports
Virginia’s New Consumer Data Protection Act: Will Others Follow?

By Lars Lindgren — Edited By Jessica I. Valenzuela Ramirez
Posted on March 16, 2021 Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act of 2021 (“VCDPA”) Va. Code Ann. § 52 The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (“VCDPA”) was signed into law on March 2, 2021 and will go into effect on January 1, 2023. With California passing the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) in 2018, Virginia became the second state to enact comprehensive privacy legislation. State Senator...
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Reports Privacy
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