Last December my colleague Matt Landis wrote about how 2016 was a big year for Lancaster’s tech community. Not satisfied with that success, 2017 has continued to highlight Lancaster’s tech sector. Here are a few examples making the front page this year:
For a long time after I moved to Lancaster County I kept my area code 570 cell phone number. Every time I gave that number to a store clerk they would stop, have to quickly delete the 717 they typed automatically, and ask me to repeat my number again. Revenge comes tomorrow when all calls
In an era of ever expanding uses for our smart devices, we know that we rely to some extent upon cloud based services. (I almost said smartphones until I responded to a text on my Huawei Watch while typing that sentence). These come in many flavors such as software-as-a-service (SaaS or “sass”) platforms like Office 365 or Gmail or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS or “I don’t have any idea how to pronounce this so I call it i-a-a-s”) platforms like Amazon Web Services. But explaining the differences between these tools can be tough.
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Two of the most common complaints I hear as a litigation attorney are “why is it so expensive” and “why does it take so long.” Part of the answer to both questions are the procedural rules for discovery which often end up being both a blessing and a curse. The upside is that parties can fully investigate the factual basis for their claims. The downside is that the exploration comes at a cost of time and money.
To streamline the discovery process, many courts have adopted form interrogatories (i.e. written
questions) and document requests for certain kinds of cases. For example, the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has form discovery requests for use in premises liability and motor vehicle accident cases. These form requests avoid wrangling between the attorneys over whether a request is too broad. They can also be answered more quickly since attorney’s who expect the requests will tailor their intake forms and client questionnaires to get the information they know they will need for discovery.
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We trust our computers to handle our to-do lists and calendars because they never forget, right? While computers are good at remembering what we tell them (and a big thank you to Google for remembering my kids’ birthdays), one of the current weaknesses of artificial intelligence (AI) is that it cannot apply what it learns in a different scenario. For example, an AI that learns to play chess does not have a leg up when learning to play checkers. Essentially, computers have a “catastrophic forgetting” problem that forces them to relearn what they already knew just because they are presented with a new project.
Researchers are now making breakthroughs to overcome this ‘forgetfulness’ problem. Working in connection with neuroscientists, researchers are attempting to have AI learn more like humans so they can apply what they have learned in one context to another related context without starting over. In other words, teach computers to learn more like humans do so they stop forgetting what they already learned.
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I often hear at the outset of a case that one or both parties want to “stand on principle.” When it is my client who wants to do so, I am frequently asked whether we have a “good chance of winning” and, if so, they say they want to proceed. Sometimes they want to do so despite my warnings about the potential cost. Rather than merely deciding whether to sue based upon principle, in my opinion we should stop so we do not lose the forest for this particular, thorny and annoying tree.
In some cases, the fight is inevitable. The issue is too big, the stakes are the survival of a company, or parties just need someone (i.e. the court) to separate them. That said, there are often alternatives to a lawsuit. Rather than standing on “principle,” I encourage my clients to ask themselves:
Last Thursday Matt Landis and I joined forces with Omega Systems to provide an update on managing cyber security to the Central PA Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators. Here are a few of the latest cyber security threats:
As the supplies of candy dwindle in our homes from the Halloween harvest, our attention turns to the day of giving thanks. After running across Affinity Consulting’s awesome annual collection of Tech for Which We Are Thankful, I was inspired to survey our blog’s authors for their tech favorites. Here is some of the tech we are grateful for (and yes, we have lots of tech here in the heart of Lancaster’s farm country):
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Smart phones are increasingly being designed as tools to allow users to enter virtual and augmented realities. Also, dedicated virtual reality hardware is becoming widely available and increasingly more affordable. At the same time these devices are becoming available, companies like Lancaster’s own Greenfish Labs are providing virtual reality development to organizations like the Catholic Church. The combination of access and development can only lead to an explosion of virtual and augmented reality to mainstream audiences in the next few years. So how can you prepare your company for the legal risks that arise from using these technologies? Let’s examine a few existing technologies that already face the same or similar risks to get some answers.
So you have captured tons of juicy information from the opposing party’s Facebook page that will let you destroy them during cross examination. You have images from a night on the town and several damaging comments by the opponent and his friends. So… how do you get that information into evidence?
You start with the same rules that apply to all evidence. Is it relevant to the claims and defenses (or does it merely paint them in a negative light)? Is it hearsay (an out-of-court statement you will need an exception for or it will not be admitted into evidence)? Merely because it is electronic does not remove these traditional evidentiary hurdles.
Social media, like most electronic discovery, also often comes with an additional hurdle: how do I prove it is what it looks like, e.g. how do I authenticate it? Critically, authentication “requires more than mere confirmation that the number or address belonged to a particular person.” Commonwealth v. Mosley, 114 A.3d 1072, 1081 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2015). In other words, simply having a witness testify “that is her Twitter account” is not enough. You need something extra to confirm that the user actually created the content.
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