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Last week, the Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus brief in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in support of Internet Archive (“IA”) a non-profit digital library working to provide access to cultural artifacts of all kinds. The Clinic filed the brief on behalf of amici curiae Kenneth D. Crews and Kevin L. Smith, library and information scholars and historians with significant expertise on libraries and archives. The brief supports IA in a case filed against them by book publishers, alleging that IA’s controlled digital lending (“CDL”) program infringes their copyrights. →

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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