Blog

On Monday, April 11, 2022, the Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus brief in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in support of four former employees of GrubHub. Amici curiae Professors Jonathan Askin, Vivek Krishnamurthy, Christopher Morten, and Jason Schultz are scholars and clinicians engaged in research concerning the impact of technology on society. The brief supports the GrubHub workers’ argument that they are exempt from mandatory arbitration as “workers engaged in interstate commerce.”

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Attention Harvard Law School 1Ls and 2Ls:  clinical registration for the 2022-23 academic year takes place on Wednesday March 30, 2022 and Thursday March 31, 2022! If you are interested in exploring issues at the nexus of technology, law, policy, and social justice, while gaining real-world law practice experience, we strongly encourage to you to join us in the Cyberlaw Clinic in fall 2022 or spring 2023. Detailed information about clinical registration is available through the HLS Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs. →

On Monday, January 10, 2022, the Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus brief (.pdf) in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in support of Forbes Media, LLC (“Forbes Media”). The Clinic filed this brief on behalf of Restore the Fourth, Inc., a non-partisan non-profit focused on issues of privacy, surveillance, and the Fourth Amendment. The brief supports Forbes Media in seeking a reversal of a Northern District of California opinion that denied the disclosure of non-identifying portions of law enforcement All Writs Act (“AWA”) requests.

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Public.Resource.org, working with Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, has advanced its mission to enhance public access to government information by challenging states that improperly claim copyright protection over model jury instructions used by litigants in state courts. By making model jury instructions available to the public, and by encouraging states to remove barriers to access, Public.Resource.org aims to enhance access to justice and promote engagement with the judicial process.  →

On Friday, December 17, the Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Engine Advocacy (“Engine”), the Public Interest Patent Law Institute (“PIPLI”), and ACT | the App Association. The brief supports Apple’s petition for a writ of certiorari in the case, Apple v. Qualcomm. Apple is asking that the Supreme Court review a decision of the United States Court of Appeals or the Federal Circuit, which held that Apple lacked standing to challenge the validity of patents that it licensed from Qualcomm. →

Yesterday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in Commonwealth v. Perry, a case about the constitutionality of cell tower dumps. The Cyberlaw Clinic was honored to represent the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project as amici in this important case. S.T.O.P.’s brief (pdf) argues that cell tower dumps are an unreliable and unconstitutional form of dragnet surveillance.

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The Cyberlaw Clinic is hiring summer interns for 2022! Current U.S. JD candidates with an interest in the intersection of tech, law, and social justice are invited to join our dynamic team! Summer legal interns work on all aspects of the Cyberlaw Clinic’s caseload and, like Fall and Spring semester students, take the lead on the projects they join, supported by the Clinic staff. Although Clinic projects vary from summer to summer, they often include substantive law related to the First Amendment, computer security, digital privacy, intellectual property, civic innovation, emerging technologies such as AI, human rights, and media and the arts. Interns will be involved in supporting the Clinic’s ongoing docket and in planning decisions about clients, cases, and topic areas to be addressed in the Clinic’s work during the upcoming academic year. Interns are supervised and mentored by the Cyberlaw Clinic instructors, and are provided with feedback and growth opportunities. →

On October 15, 2021, the Cyberlaw Clinic submitted a Comment on behalf of the Public Interest Patent Law Institute (PIPLI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to ensuring that the patent system promotes innovation and benefits the public. The Comment responded to the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Request for Information seeking opinions on the current state of patent eligibility jurisprudence. That jurisprudence — including a quartet of Supreme Court decisions in Bilski, Mayo, Myriad, and Alice — reinforced the importance of baseline standards that the USPTO and federal courts should apply in determining whether a patent application involves eligible subject matter. →