Monthly Archives: February, 2025
Postdoctoral Fellowship: Project on the Foundations of Private Law, Harvard Law School
Postdoctoral Fellowships in Private Law are full-time, one- or two-year residential appointments, and the Project is now advertising for a postdoctoral fellow starting in the Fall of 2025. Fellows devote their full time to scholarly activities in furtherance of their individual research agendas … (more)
Collins and Freedman, ‘Employment Status: The Death Throes of the Tests of Mutuality of Obligation and Control’
ABSTRACT The UK Supreme Court in HMRC v Professional Game Match Officials Ltd answered two contentious issues about the identification of contracts of employment for the purpose of tax law. The first rejected the claim that ‘mutuality of obligation’ is a necessary feature of contracts of employment unless it is interpreted to mean the same […]
Burrell and Handler, ‘Who Reads the Trade Marks Register?’
ABSTRACT This article starts with a question that looks like it has been taken from an introductory legal reasoning class, namely, is coffee a non-alcoholic beverage? It will be seen that from a trade mark perspective there is reason to conclude that coffee is definitely a non-alcoholic beverage in Australia, is definitely not a non-alcoholic […]
Devin Owens, ‘Artificial Intelligence Models May Not Have Owners’
ABSTRACT While new artificial intelligence models see unprecedented investment, serious questions exist about the ownership of the models themselves under existing intellectual property structures. AI models, as compilations of information created largely autonomously by algorithms from sets of training data, may not be suited for the subject matter and inventorship/authorship requirements of traditional patent and […]
Debadatta Bose, ‘The Tort of Irresponsible Contracting: Supply Chain Liability Explained Through Begum v Maran’
ABSTRACT This book chapter challenges the notion that business decisions are isolated from human rights considerations. It places a large emphasis on the UK case of Begum v Maran, where a corporation was held potentially liable in tort for harms in a Bangladeshi shipyard where a ship it sold ended up for demolition. The case […]
Kelvin Hiu Fai Kwok, ‘An Autonomy Theory of Consumer Protection Law’
ABSTRACT This article sets forth a new autonomy theory of consumer protection law (CPL), drawing on Joseph Raz’s framework on personal autonomy and explicating the relationship between CPL interventions and the independence, rationality, and opportunity dimensions of autonomy. It seeks to contrast the autonomy perspective on freedom of choice and the corresponding role of CPL […]
Omri Ben-Shahar, ‘Safety Score Liability’
ABSTRACT Data technology is increasingly deployed to assign safety scores to people and products. Could these scores be used by tort law to apportion liability for accidents? Instead of basing tort liability on negligence – on the level of care leading to the specific accident – ‘safety score liability’ would impose liability commensurate with a […]
Itai Fiegenbaum, ‘Caremark’s Fractured State’
ABSTRACT The term ‘Caremark duties’ serves as an accepted shorthand for a director’s proactive obligation to establish a corporate monitoring system and then oversee its continued effectiveness. The Caremark doctrine has evolved significantly over time. From its origins as part of the exculpable duty of care to its current status as part of the non-exculpable […]
Camilla Hrdy, ‘Trade Secrecy Meets Generative AI’
ABSTRACT Generative AI models like ChatGPT raise novel issues for trade secret law. This Essay identifies three major developments and explains how the law will likely respond based on analogies to past technologies and past case law. First, widespread use of generative AI poses new risks to companies’ existing trade secrets. For example, trade secret […]
Saw and Lim, ‘The Case For AI Authorship In Copyright Law’
ABSTRACT Today, with generative AI, literary and artistic works can be created almost effortlessly. There is at present intense debate as to whether works generated by AI – broadly categorised as ‘AI-assisted’ and ‘AI-generated’ works – ought to attract copyright protection. AI-assisted works are those that involve some degree of human intervention. Where AI-generated works […]