Georgetown Law
Technology Review

On September 4, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google will be required to pay $170 million to the FTC and the state of New York for children’s data privacy violations. The fine is part of a settlement in a case filed against Google and its subsidiary, YouTube, in the district court for the District […]

Would you let someone pay you $20 per month to look at every picture, message, and email you send? Every website you visit? Watch everything you look at on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube? Most would not. Yet this is exactly the deal Facebook secretly made with a myriad of users age 13–35. Why would […]

With cybersecurity attacks on the rise and amid growing calls for transparency in the private sector, public companies may soon be required to disclose whether they have any cybersecurity experts on their Boards of Directors in their periodic filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The pending bill, the Cybersecurity Disclosure Act of […]

In January 2019, the USPTO published new patent subject-matter eligibility guidelines to direct inventors, attorneys, and courts in patentability assessment. The new guidelines provide crucial clarity to the original USPTO eligibility standards. Why the Change? The original patent subject-matter eligibility guidelines, codified in U.S §101, state: “Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, […]

When the Federal Circuit granted en banc review of Alice in 2013, the Court asked the parties and amici curiaefor assistance in developing a test to determine whether a computer-implemented invention is patent-eligible or whether these inventions merely recite abstract ideas ineligible for protection. The Federal Circuit had been struggling to provide guidance on what […]

While both sides conceded from the beginning that few minds would be changed, supporters and opponents of the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint squared off in a lively debate at the Capitol Visitors Center on March 5, hosted by the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy. The event came on the heels […]

As part of the United States Government’s strategy to combat the potential threat of Chinese telecoms companies being leveraged by their government to enhance China’s intelligence collection capabilities, Huawei is the latest front in the battle. Last August, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”) which provided over $700 billion in funding for the […]

Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck is a pending United States Supreme Court case about a public access cable television station in New York. The Manhattan Community Access Corporation (“MNN”) is a nonprofit company that operates four public-access channels in Manhattan. Such channels must be open to the public on a first-come and first-served basis. […]

The Bundeskartellamt, Germany’s antitrust authority and Federal Cartel Office, recently issued a regulatory blow to Facebook, labeling Facebook’s current data collection practices abusive. On February 6, 2019, the Bundeskartellamt ordered Facebook to cease cross-app integration and data tracking from Facebook-owned apps like WhatsApp and Instagram to Facebook user accounts without “users’ voluntary consent.” The regulator […]

On February 2nd, the New York City Police Department sent Google a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that it remove a popular function from its Waze navigation app that allows drivers to share and avoid the locations of police checkpoints.  “Individuals who post the locations of DWI checkpoints,” the letter stated, “may be engaging in criminal conduct[,] […]