JTIP Blog

If nothing else, Facebook’s recent announcement that it plans to change its name to “Meta” is a sign that the metaverse is coming and that our legal system must be prepared for it. As the metaverse, the concept of a virtual version of the physical world, gains increased popularity, individuals will engage in more transactions […]

When Meta’s services went down this past October, users were unable to access all of Meta’s applications, including Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. This digital outage had physical consequences, as some Meta employees got locked out of their offices. The effects rippled outside of Meta’s own ecosystem, as some consumers soon discovered they were unable to […]

When a musician desires to record a cover version of a song (i.e., their own version of a song written or made famous by someone else), the process for obtaining the rights to do so is quite simple: they obtain a mechanical license—a compulsory license that can be obtained by paying the appropriate fee to […]

What’s The Issue? It seems logical that the creator of a work would own the rights to that work. This general idea imports easily into some industries but creates problems in the music industry. The reality is that the main rights holder of a creative musical work is often not the musicians but collective management […]

Introduction Throughout the past two years, AI-powered stem-splitting services have emerged online, allowing users to upload any audio file and access extracted, downloadable audio stems. A “stem” is an audio file that contains a mixture of a song’s similarly situated musical components. For example, if one records a mix of twenty harmonized vocal tracks, that […]

What are Copyright Bots? Digital media handles like Instagram, YouTube, and Tik Tok are now the platforms of choice for creators, new and old, to showcase their work. The accessibility of these platforms opens an untapped market of creativity, allowing for anyone with a smartphone to disseminate their work. With great freedom, though, the potential […]

On July 1, 2021, the original source code for the World Wide Web sold for $5.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction. This was not the actual source code, which is open source and freely available in the public domain, but rather a non-fungible token (NFT) version of the source code. NFTs, a new block chain […]

TRIPS Waiver and COVID-19 Policy As COVID continues to impact nations across the world, policymakers are left trying to facilitate ways to better deal with a global event of this magnitude. Public health concerns forced leaders to re-think current laws and agreements. Intellectual property law is not an outlier. To mitigate some of the effects […]

Gambling, in one way or another, has been part of American life for centuries—early colonists participated in activities such as lotteries, betting on cock fights, and other games of chance. Throughout our history, gambling has remained a source of moral debate. On one hand, it is argued that Americans should be free to use their money how […]

The Development of Artificial Intelligence Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has developed into deep learning. Deep learning is the ability of an AI system not only to learn but also to independently make decisions without human intervention. With the development of deep learning, services that automatically compose music or draw a picture are appearing. For example, […]

To clients, legal billing can seem “like a black box.” Many clients worry about lawyers overstating their billable hours (“bill padding”) or charging exorbitant hourly rates. By using data analytics to optimize legal billing (“data-driven billing”), law firms can stand out from their competitors and win more business.  1 – Problems that Exist in Legal […]

     Underlying the U.S. and global patent systems is the belief that granting a limited monopoly will incentivize innovation. Although climate change comes to mind as a particularly controversial topic, according to PEW Research, six in ten Americans and majorities in other surveyed countries see climate change as a major threat.  Patent filings seemed to reflect that concern […]