Internet Law

Employees the world over were locked out of their computers on May 12 and over that following weekend as an insidious and widespread cyberattack nicknamed "WannaCry" rolled through the Internet and into headlines. Luckily for U.S. law firms, experts said it was unlikely that this particular ransomware attack hit many of them. However, they fear aftershocks.

Anyone following the news headlines of late is aware that artificial intelligence (AI) is being heralded as the technology that will transform industries far and wide — including the legal profession. Here we will briefly consider three areas or "maturity levels" of analytics — descriptive, predictive and prescriptive — and look at their role in revolutionizing the practice of law today.

Web pages are a treasure-trove of useful information for companies that are able to capture it using Web crawling (or scraping) technology. Yet, for over 20 years, courts have struggled to draw the line between the usefulness of such information and the rights of the content owners and website operators from which that content is derived. Once a niche issue, the increased use of this technology has compounded the disputes related to it.

While social media profiles can present a trove of data points for jury selection — one that legal tech companies are eager to mine — researching jurors online while keeping on the right side of the judge and local ethics rules is hardly a straightforward exercise.

Consumers might use "Google" as a verb, but that doesn't mean Google's trademark for its search engine is generic.

Facebook Inc. received one of its biggest regulatory slaps late last month when European antitrust regulators fined it $122 million for providing misleading statements about its 2014 purchase of WhatsApp. The fine is relatively small compared to Facebook's annual profits, but it does signal a more aggressive regulatory environment in the region.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is gearing up to hear argument in BMG Rights Management v. Cox Communications, one of the first attempts by the music industry to hold an ISP liable for unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing by its subscribers.

Hui Chen, the contracted compliance counsel at the Department of Justice, often talks about how the tone at the top is important to compliance officers. But Chen clearly is not happy with the tone at the top of the organization, because she has been openly posting anti-Trump messages on her Twitter account, @HuiChenEthics.