(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an amended opinion, held that greeting-card companies were not entitled to summary judgment against a trademark infringement suit. The companies insisted they did not violate the Lanham Act by selling greeting cards that contained phrases similar to one trademarked by a comedy writer. However, the Ninth Circuit found genuine issues of material fact, and thus reversed and remanded for further proceedings on the comedy writer's claims.

This note examines the published data protection impact assessment (DPIA) released by NHSX in relation to their contact tracing/proximity tracing app. It highlights a range of significant issues which leave the app falling short of data protection legislation. It does this in order so that these issues can be remedied before the next DPIA is published.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed that a pharmaceutical company's patent claims in a multiple sclerosis drug were invalid for obviousness. Several competitors seeking to market a generic version of the same drug raised the issue of obviousness when the company sued them for infringement. In a 2-1 decision, the Federal Circuit affirmed that the patent claims in question were invalid.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Held that greeting-card companies were not entitled to summary judgment against a trademark infringement suit. The companies insisted that they did not violate the Lanham Act by producing greeting cards that contained phrases similar to one trademarked by a comedy writer who had posted a popular YouTube video known for its catchphrase Honey Badger Don't Care. However, the Ninth Circuit found genuine issues of material fact, and thus reversed and remanded for further proceedings on the comedy writer's claims.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed that a pharmaceutical company's patent claims in a multiple sclerosis drug were invalid for obviousness. Several competitors seeking to market a generic version of the same drug raised the issue of obviousness when the company sued them for infringement. In a 2-1 decision, the Federal Circuit affirmed that the patent claims in question were invalid.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an amended opinion, held that greeting-card companies were not entitled to summary judgment against a trademark infringement suit. The companies insisted they did not violate the Lanham Act by selling greeting cards that contained phrases similar to one trademarked by a comedy writer. However, the Ninth Circuit found genuine issues of material fact, and thus reversed and remanded for further proceedings on the comedy writer's claims.

(California Court of Appeal) - The trial court's order granting plaintiff's motion for attorney fees incurred in a prior appeal is affirmed, where: 1) the order granting plaintiff's motion for attorney fees is directly appealable under the collateral order doctrine; and 2) the trial court did not err by awarding attorney fees against defendant because substantial evidence supported a finding that defendant stepped into the shoes of its predecessors the parties to the credit applications that included the attorney fees provision on which the award of attorney fees was based.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. An insurer had to replace the siding on an entire building whose south and west sides were damaged by a storm because the old siding was no longer available and the new siding didn't match.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Vacating a district court judgment granting a writ of habeas corpus on the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing and affirming the denial of other forms of relief challenging the conviction and death sentence for first degree murder because although there were representation issues relating to sentencing the deficiencies were not prejudicial.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirming the Court of International Trade's affirmation of the US Department of Commerce's findings following a review of the antidumping duty order on certain frozen warmwater shrimp from India.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirming the US Court of International Trade's dismissal of two separate complaints challenging the countervailing duties on imported goods charged to an importer of aluminum extrusions from China because, regardless of the difference in rates between this importer's charge and a subsequent litigation into a similar matter, the importer was not a party to the other action, and they had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and could not claim the benefit of the rate awarded in separate litigation.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed that a pharmaceutical company's patent claims in a multiple sclerosis drug were invalid for obviousness. Several competitors seeking to market a generic version of the same drug raised the issue of obviousness when the company sued them for infringement. In a 2-1 decision, the Federal Circuit affirmed that the patent claims in question were invalid.

(California Court of Appeal) - In a grape rootstock seller's challenge to the mandatory assessments it must pay to the California Grape Rootstock Improvement Commission to help fund research for pest-resistant and drought-resistant rootstock, Food & Agr. Code sections 74701-74796, alleging it is an unconstitutional exercise of the state's police power in violation of plaintiff's liberty interests and due process rights under the federal and state Constitutions, the trial court's judgment in favor of defendants is affirmed where the Commission Law has a reasonable relation to a legitimate purpose and its delegation to nursery owners does not invalide the law.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirming the Court of International Trade's affirmation of the US Department of Commerce's findings following a review of the antidumping duty order on certain frozen warmwater shrimp from India.

(United States Sixth Circuit) - In a company's suit under section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA) to vacate or modify the arbitration award against it, district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the union is affirmed where: 1) the arbitrator did not exceed his authority by interpreting the CBA in a way that allowed the company to be found liable for a breach; 2) the arbitrator did not exceed the scope of his authority to decide a representational issue in this case because the arbitrator's successor decision was permissible in furtherance of his interpretation of the CBA; 3) the award's remedy does not violate public policy; and 4) the arbitrator did not dispense his own brand of industrial justice.

(United States First Circuit) - Affirming the district court dismissal of a case in which a class of purchasers of securities issued by a drug company that the investors said recklessly misled them about their target date for submitting an application to the Food and Drug Administration for a drug approval because the court did not err in finding that they had failed to state a claim.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Reversed in part the dismissal of a securities fraud class action alleging that a biotechnology firm misrepresented to investors the status of a clinical drug trial. An investor brought this suit contending that the company and certain top executives violated Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit held that the district court erred in part in dismissing the complaint for failure to state a claim. The panel also ruled that the district court abused its discretion in judicially noticing certain facts and in incorporating certain documents into the complaint.

A Chechen migrant was arrested in the commune of Montereau-Fault-Yonne after dragging a police officer 60 feet with his vehicle while trying to escape a Wuhan coronavirus lockdown checkpoint.

An Italian nurse working on the frontline against the Chinese coronavirus was brutally sexually assaulted by an African migrant after finishing her shift and heading to her home.

(Supreme Court of California) - Affirmed judgment and sentence of capital punishment in death penalty case.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Held that a manufacturer breached its contractual agreement with a distributor in the medical-supply industry. Affirmed a bench trial judgment, in a case involving distribution rights to a special type of hospital bed.

From Avery Burns, the new Acquisitions Editor for the Cumberland Law Review. Our theme for Issue 2 of Volume 51 is arbitration, mediation, negotiation, and other forms of the ADR practice. I am reaching out to see if you would be interested in possibly writing an article for the Law Review on any of the … Continue reading Cumberland Law Review Call for Papers →

Tina Campbell talks about how the Bible changed her mindset.

She also teased the Xscape biopic.

The singer says she’s having her butt enhancements removed.

Says troubled marriage inspired her to become a feminist.

Resolutions beware, actor takes fitness kick to a new level.

Ian Connor still has friends in high places.

TRB released a straight-to-recording series in April that presents highlights and findings of the NCHRP Domestic Scan 16-02 on Landscape Design Practices for Roadside Water Management . This scan investigated how transportation agencies are applying principles and practices of green infrastructure (GI) for roadside water management to mitigate adverse impacts of flooding, drought, and temperature extremes affecting their infrastructure. The videos are available on-demand at no charge. Presenters: Garrett...

The TRB Standing Technical Committee on Bicycle Transportation has been in existence for about 45 years, founded in 1974 as the Bicycling and Bicycles Committee. We had an early name change to the Committee on Bicycling and Bicycle Facilities shortly after our birth and became the Bicycle Transportation Committee in 1996. The committee's existence closely parallels the history of bicycle transportation research in the United States. Very little was done prior to the mid-1970s, when a surge of interest in...

The Alcohol and Other Drugs Committee's Centennial Paper to review what it has accomplished since its inception in the early 1970s, how it has evolved along with the field, and what challenges and opportunities it confronts going forward. To learn more about the history of impaired driving and the Standing Technical Committee on Alcohol, Other Drugs, and Transportation (ANB50), check out the Committee's Centennial Paper. As part of TRB's Centennial Celebration, the Technical Activities Council invited al...

TRB 2021 Committee Paper Review will go on as scheduled. The submission site will open June 1 and the deadline is August 1. We have learned a lot during this year’s transition to the TRR Editorial Board workflow for publication papers and have listened to your feedback. Important improvements this year include: • Committee review comments will go to authors by October 31. • Full papers will be posted in the interactive program unless the authors “opt out” because they wish to publish the paper elsewhere....

How do transportation agencies apply principles of green infrastructure (GI) to roadside water management? TRB is hosting a webinar on Monday, May 18, 2020 from 2:00 to 3:30 PM Eastern that aims to answer this question. Presenters will identify how GI may be used to mitigate impacts of flooding, drought, and temperature extremes that affect infrastructure. This webinar draws on research from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Domestic Scan Program 16-02: Leading Landscape Design Pr...

The unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) industry is on the cutting edge of aviation innovation. Airports, including tenants and contractors, are discovering the benefits of UAS to their operations and bottom line. Yet, with the diversity of UAS applications at airports, there has been a lack of relevant industry data on this topic to inform the airport industry on current practices. The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's ACRP Synthesis 104: Current Landscape of Unmanned Aircraft Systems at Airports s...

TRB 2021 Committee Paper Review will go on as scheduled. The submission site will open June 1 and the deadline is August 1. We have learned a lot during this year’s transition to the TRR Editorial Board workflow for publication papers and have listened to your feedback. Important improvements this year include: • Committee review comments will go to authors by October 31. • Full papers will be posted in the interactive program unless the authors “opt out” because they wish to publish the paper elsewhere....

The University of Texas at Austin is hosting Bridging Transportation Researchers (BTR) Online Conference  on August 11-12, 2020. TRB is pleased to cosponsor this event. This zero-carbon, zero-cost conference will host multiple Zoom-based tracks to virtually and globally unite transportation engineers, planners, and policymakers to discuss a wide range of transportation research topics and results, including: Multi-modal transportation network and systems Travel demand forecasting, including connecte...

Standing Technical Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure got its start as the Task Force on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Security tied directly in response to the Presidential Decision Directive 63, Critical Infrastructure Protection (PPD-63). Soon after the task force was established, as a way to bring awareness to this topic, TRB published a special edition of TR News (211): Transportation Security: Protecting the System from Attack and Theft (November-December 2000). The editio...

In this reboot of the Three Paper Thursdays, back after a hiatus of almost eight years, I consider the many different ways in which programs can be sanitised to detect, or mitigated to prevent the use of, the many programmer errors that can introduce security vulerabilities in low-level languages such as C and C++. We … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: Sanitisers and Mitigators →

The platforms, providers, and infrastructures which together make up the contemporary Internet play an increasingly central role in the business of governing human societies. Although the software engineers, administrators, business professionals, and other staff working at these organisations may not have the institutional powers of state organisations such as law enforcement or the civil service, … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: The role of intermediaries, platforms, and infrastructures in governing crime and abuse →

Recent advancements in Machine Learning (ML) have taught us two main lessons: a large proportion of things that humans do can actually be automated, and that a substantial part of this automation can be done with minimal human supervision. One no longer needs to select features for models to use; in many cases people are … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: Adversarial Machine Learning, Humans and everything in between →

People have tried to develop many different attack vectors on cryptocurrencies, from codebase flaws, cryptographic algorithms, mining processes, consensus protocols and block propagation mechanisms to the underlying network layer. Most attacks could be patched quickly by modifying the source code, but preventing attacks that exploit the network layer remains a non-trivial problem as the network … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: Attacking the Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network →

Just as in other types of victimization, victims of cybercrime can experience serious consequences, emotional or not. First of all, a repeat victim of a cyber-attack might face serious financial or emotional hardship. These victims are also more likely to require medical attention as a consequence of online fraud victimization. This means repeat victims have a … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: Exploring the Impact of Online Crime Victimization →

Software Guard eXtensions (SGX) represents Intel’s latest foray into trusted computing. Initially intended as a means to secure cloud computation, it has since been employed for DRM and secure key storage in production systems. SGX differs from its competitors such as TrustZone in its focus on reducing the volume of trusted code in its “secure … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: What’s Intel SGX Good For? →

A simple and easy dessert that is perfect for individual snacks or can be made as a whole cheesecake.

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

Hibiscus tea mixed with tequila, lime, jalapeno, and pineapple makes this one delicious cocktail!

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

Revisit what it’s like to run a PDP-10 and be eaten by a grue

Source code for seminal adventure game Zork, dating back to 1977 and recovered from MIT tapes, was published this week on GitHub.…