The DTSA’s Federalism Problem: Federal Court Jurisdiction over Trade Secrets

The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”) greatly expanded federal protection of trade secrets. But how many trade secrets were “federalized”? The short answer is: many, but not all. At the heart of the DTSA lies a mammoth jurisdictional problem: Congress only federalized certain trade secrets. Unlike copyrights and patents, Congress has no independent constitutional basis to regulate trade secrets. Instead, like trademarks, trade secrets are regulated under the commerce clause and must satisfy a jurisdictional element, which requires a nexus between interstate commerce and trade secrets. But unlike trademarks, Congress chose not to legislate to the fullest extent of its commerce clause power, excluding some trade secrets from federal protection. In short, the DTSA’s jurisdictional element ensures that only “technical” trade secrets—i.e., formulae, manufacturing processes, etc.—qualify for federal protection. “Business information” secrets are protected, if at all, only under state law. This Article is the first to explain the DTSA’s jurisdictional element in depth and explore its practical and theoretical implications. Interpretation of the jurisdictional element in the DTSA is the Act’s key judicial dilemma. The jurisdictional element imposes two requirements on a federal plaintiff’s trade secret: (1) that the trade secret closely relates to a product or service; and (2) that the product or service actually flows in interstate commerce. As a practical matter, the old trade secret tort has been split in two—with technical trade secrets federalized and business information remaining protected solely by state law. Theoretically, this interpretation brings trade secret policy in line with other species of federal intellectual property policies

Collaborative Practices in Information Systems Development: A Collective Reflection-in-Action Framework

With the growth of consumer-faced information systems (IS) applications, IS designers are increasingly moving from seeing their work as ìcapturing and automating requirementsî to seeing it as ìinnovation in product development.î The new metaphor engenders organizational practices targeted at fostering innovation. One such practice is the creation of professionally and organizationally diverse development teams with the goal of creatively combining individual competencies in the resultant product. This paper draws on the longitudinal field study of such a team in order to build a practice-based framework for understanding collaboration on IS development (ISD) projects. The framework depicts ISD as a collective reflection-in-action process that increasingly defines the product. The IS product is the result of participants iteratively challenging each other or following what has been already established on the project. Which action is taken is shaped by the status relations among professionally and organizationally diverse actors

Getting In On the Act: How Arts Groups are Creating Opportunities for Active Participation

Arts participation is being redefined as people increasingly choose to engage with art in new, more active and expressive ways. This movement carries profound implications, and fresh opportunities, for the nonprofit arts sector.We are in the midst of a seismic shift in cultural production, moving from a "sit-back-and-be-told culture" to a "making-and-doing-culture." Active or participatory arts practices are emerging from the fringes of the Western cultural tradition to capture the collective imagination. Many forces have conspired to lead us to this point. The sustained economic downturn that began in 2008, rising ticket prices, the pervasiveness of social media, the roliferation of digital content and rising expectations for self-guided, on-demand, customized experiences have all contributed to a cultural environment primed for active arts practice. This shift calls for a new equilibrium in the arts ecology and a new generation of arts leaders ready to accept, integrate and celebrate all forms of cultural practice. This is, perhaps, the defining challenge of our time for artists, arts organizations and their supporters -- to embrace a more holistic view of the cultural ecology and identify new possibilities for Americans to engage with the arts.How can arts institutions adapt to this new environment?Is participatory practice contradictory to, or complementary to, a business model that relies on professional production and consumption?How can arts organizations enter this new territory without compromising their values r artistic ideals?This report aims to illuminate a growing body of practice around participatory engagement (with various illustrative case studies profiled at the end) and dispel some of the anxiety surrounding this sphere of activity

Identification and analysis of the driving factors for product modularity by Interpretive Structural Modelling

Goal: The purpose of this study is to identify the driving factors that affects modular product design and development and to determine the contextual relationships between the identified factors. Design / Methodology / Approach: This research study adopted both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In qualitative part, an extensive literature review is conducted along with interviews with the experts experienced in product design and development in order to identify and sorted out the driving factors for product modularity. In quantitative part, all the identified factors were analyzed through Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) method. MICMAC (Matrice d'Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquéeáun Classement (cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification) analysis is carried out to determine the relative driving and dependency power of the factors. Results: The contribution of this paper is the identification of the factors associated with developing a modular product. Through the use of ISM diagraph, the identified factors were clustered into different layers based on their driving and dependency characteristics. The ISM diagram also presented the relationship between one factor over others and the reason for such relationship. Such a diagram offers decision maker better visibility on the factor that they need to consider or strategy they need to implement to improve their modular product design and development architecture. The results from this research study encompass organizational managers for handling multiple design views, controlling design related interfaces and ranking the status and progress of product modularity and design completeness. Practical implications: The study outcomes support product designers to optimize their product development processes, especially to develop modular products. The presented methodology can be used extensively used by the product designers/planners/managers to find the driving factors related to modular product design and development. Originality / Value: The originality of this research study is to deploy the ISM approach, which can be used by the organizational managers and/or product designers to plan product development strategies. Such strategies help to them to make necessary decisions on resources allocations. Limitations of the investigation: The outcomes from this research may not be generalize sufficiently due to subjectivity of the interviewers.© 2020 Brazilian Association of Production Engineering (ABEPRO). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Research 2.0 : improving participation in online research communities

Web 2.0 thinking and technologies create a number of new opportunities to conduct research broadly labeled as Research 2.0. Research 2.0 is a growing area of academic and commercial interest, which includes research undertaken in online research communities. This research in progress paper explores the practice of online research communities using a case study example operated by the commercial market research company Virtual Surveys Limited (VSL) in the UK on behalf of their client United Biscuits UK Ltd. The preliminary findings are based on VSL and academics working together to improve the online research community participants’ response rate and the quality of contributions. Data collected for this study is based on meetings, participant observation, and a pilot survey of United Biscuits online research community (snackrs.com) members. Using the responses of 112 snackrs.com community members, a preliminary typology of motivational factors is proposed. This can be used to refine the recruitment and development of activities in an online research community. Also, a model for supporting online research communities to ensure longitudinal engagement based on an adaptation of Salmon’s (2004) 5 Stage Model for e-moderation is proposed, extending the 5 stages to 7 – adding the stages of selection and disengagemen

Toward Auto-netnography in Consumer Studies

The purpose of this paper is to offer an argument for a wider acceptance and adoption of online auto-ethnography - or auto-netnography as an alternative social media research method to online ethnography - or netnography - when undertaking consumer research. As an online research method, netnographies have attracted increasing attention from researchers in various inter-disciplinary studies during recent years but the method is still not considered mainstream. Whilst the proliferation of online communities using various social media platforms is increasingly supporting consumers when making product/service choices, the adoption of netnographies appears to leave room for an extension towards the consideration by consumer researchers of how auto-netnography could highlight these researchers' own personal experiences in online communities. Auto-netnography allows the researcher to capture their own online experiences as a consumer would through social observation, reflexive note taking, and other forms of data. Contemporary technology can also provide a more innovative approach with artificial intelligence offering an alternative dimension. We contend there is a need for consumer researchers - both academic and practitioner - to further reflect on and discuss the deployment of auto-netnography in order to contribute to further exploration of online communities through the qualitative lens

Creating personas for political and social consciousness in HCI design

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limitations and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals in traditional persona research and creation. This focus, while helping designers, obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will or capacity of personas to take action. We argue that it is possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs and values. We also suggest that a phenomenographic approach to user data analysis is one way to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation