N91468 Law for Engineering

Topics:

Introduction to law and comparative legal systems: common law, civil law, personal liability, party autonomy and contract law.

Research question: In what ways is foreign/global law relevant to European/national law? Global corporations and International organizations role in legal standadization. 

Readings:

M. Siems, Comparative Law , Cambridge University Press.

Topics:

Privacy and data protection

This class will be focus on big data under a legal perspective, looking at why the control of personal data is a fundamental right under discrimination law. A short analysis of the historical and juridical evolution of the concept of privacy.

Readings:

S. Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2019

S, Zuboff, Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization,   Journal of Information Technology (2015) 30, 75–89

Topics:

Big data

"Data mining" is related to the automatic extraction of knowledge from large amounts of data and its use under scientific, industrial or operational targets. These processes are extending into people's everyday lives through the massive diffusion of biometric sensors, home automation or semi-automatic sensors, known as the Internet of Things (IoT). In this regard, the IoT uses a series of innovative technologies (design or fashion devices) connected to each other via wireless, tags, QR codes or RFID identifiers that link objects (things), traditionally inert, to smart devices always connected to the network to collect and process data in real time.

Readings:

IA Someh, CF Breidbach, MJ Davern, GG Shanks, Ethical Implications of Big Data Analytics, ECIS, 2016 - aisel.aisnet.org

Nitin Singh (2019) Big data technology: developments in current research and emerging landscape, Enterprise Information Systems, 13:6, 801-831, DOI: 10.1080/17517575.2019.1612098

Topics:

Intellectual Property - Patent Law - Copyright

Intellectual property rights have been recognized to guarantee the recognition of the privileges of exploitation of goods since as early as the 16th century, and consist of the right to enjoy and dispose of goods in a full and exclusive manner. There is a legal distinction between protection of ideas and physical things. Specifically, the object of the patent is the invention of a  new physical thing, and droit d'auteur (diritto d'autore) and copyright do not relate to exactly overlapping rights, although they are used as synonyms. Copyright is typical of Anglo-American common law systems and refers to the right to copy, and therefore to dissemination, reproduction and marketing of the work. Droit d'auteur is, on the other hand, proper to civil law systems and has a broader sense, since it also pertains to inalienable, non-transferable and perpetual moral rights. The moral rights of the author are inherent to his/her personality, and include the rights to honor and reputation, imprescriptible beyond the duration of seventy years of the economic exploitation of these rights.

Readings:

W. Fisher III, Theories of Intellectual Property, in Stephen Munzer, (ed.), New Essays in the Legal and Political Theory of Property, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 168 e ss.;

J. Hughes, Notes on the Origin of “Intellectual Property”, 2009, SSRN, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1432860.

P. Spada, Introduzione a AA.VV., Diritto Industriale - Proprietà intellettuale e concorrenza, Torino, 2001.

Topics:

Enviromental Law

This class will analyze the key environmental laws, regulations, and implementation systems. It analyzes the potential impact of environmental laws on business transactions and offers practical advice on dealing with regulatory and enforcement authorities. It will display information on environmental law and permits, clean-up of waste sites, emission trading and climate change, case law on environmental crimes, toxic torts, and administrative litigation.

Readings:

Tanja A. Börzel & Aron Buzogány (2019) Compliance with EU environmental law. The iceberg is melting, Environmental Politics, 28:2, 315-341, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2019.1549772

S. E. Light 71 The Law of the Corporation as Environmental Law Stan. L. Rev. 137 (2019)

Topics:

Non-discrimination principle issues at workplaces 

Analysts affirmed that one of the areas of greatest development of IoT in future will cover everything that has to do with the massive collection of personal data, such as health care and labour context, both sensitive areas of discrimination. Using wearable devices in workplaces could improve workers’ performance through checking the effectiveness of their work method, especially in some exhausting jobs. However, some workers could view these tools as invasive under their personal religious or cultural points of view. From these perspectives some ethical issues could arise, especially on the user’s awareness of which and how much of his or her personal sensitive data could be stored and, above all, transferred to third parties

Readings:

Parmenter, M., (2017), The Wellness Cure for the Workplace: Human Capital Law as a Lens for Considering Personal Health Data Beyond Privacy, 20 Tul. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 113

Van Woense, L., Archer, G., (2015), Ten technologies which could change our lives, Potential Impacts and policy implications, European Parliamentary Research Service;

Topics:

Artificial Intelligence

The aim of this class is to analyze the use of algorithms in automated decision procedures concerning subjective positions having legal relevance. In this regard, the first paragraph of Article No. 22 GDPR, entitled "Automated decision-making relating to natural persons, including profiling" establishes that: “The data subject has the right not to be subjected to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects that concern him or that significantly affects his person”. This norm gives rise to important questions concerning the very nature of decision formulation through algorithms. In hypothesis, the juridical nature or juridical effect of the the concept of “decision” could be restricted to circumstances such as financial solvency, predictability of motor vehicle accidents and similar standard situations.

Readings:

Harry Surden, Artificial Intelligence and Law: An Overview, 35 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. (2019). Available at: https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol35/iss4/8

Topics:

Case Study: Privacy: Google/Facebook/privacy/Europa/EU/USA

The 2014 decision of the European Court of Justice in Google Spain controversially held that the fair information practices set forth in European Union (EU) Directive 95/46/EC  require that Google remove from search results links to websites that contain true information. 

Among the many important legal principles, the Court of Justice recognizes the right to be forgotten, establishing that it must be verified in particular if the interested party has the right to have the information regarding his/her person no longer, at present, connected to her name by a list of visible results to the public following a search carried out starting from his/her name. In this sense, the fundamental rights recognized by Articles No. 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prevail, in principle, not only on the economic interest of the search engine manager, but also on the public's interest in accessing the aforementioned information during a search concerning the name of this person. However, for particular reasons, such as the role played by this person in public life, the interference with his/her fundamental rights is justified by the overwhelming interest of the public in having access to the information connected to him/her.

Readings:

Robert C. Post, Data Privacy and Dignitary Privacy: Google Spain, the Right To Be Forgotten, and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 67 Duke Law Journal 981-1072 (2018)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol67/iss5/2

Topics:

Case Study: Global Patent Litigation (Apple v. Samsung - Waymo v. Uber)

During this class we will discuss the main points of global patent litigation, in particular how this puts companies and legal systems in competition with one another in order to find a more favorable legal and economic environment

Readings:

Contreras, Jorge L., The Global Standards Wars: Patent and Competition Disputes in North America, Europe and Asia (January 20, 2018). Keio University Journal of Law, Politics and Sociology (Mar. 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3106090

I. Gorelik, Resolving Self-Driving Car Patent Conflicts: Arbitration in Waymo v. Uber and Future Autonomous Vehicle Patent Disputes, 20 Cardozo J. Conflict Resol. 229 (2018-2019)

Topics:

UBER case law: the US/UE perspective 

UBER is often described as a disruptive innovator. This class on UBER and UBER-like business models examines issues that such a model faces with regard to labour and competition law with a particular focuses on the competition law implications if UBER’s business model is not subject to labour law.  

Readings:

Nowag, Julian, The UBER-Cartel? UBER between Labour and Competition Law (2016). 2016 Lund Student EU Law Review Vol 3. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2826652 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2826652

Topics:

Industry 4.0: the case study

According to a widely held opinion "the term Industry 4.0 indicates a trend of industrial automation that integrates some new production technologies to improve working conditions, create new business models and increase productivity and production quality of the plants" (Wikipedia). During this lesson we will see how law deals with the topic.

Readings:

M. Chinen Law and Autonomous Machines. The Co-evolution of Legal Responsbility and Technology

E. Hilgendorf, U. Seidel, Robotics, Autonomics, and the Law. Nomos, 2017

Topics:

Students' papers discussion

Readings:

Topics:

Students' papers discussion

Readings: