Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018: An Evaluation in light of Proactive Law and Regulatory Disconnect

This is the final version. Available on open access from European Journal of Law and Technology via the link in this recordThe Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 (AEVA 2018) passed royal assent in July 2018 as the UK’s first piece of insurance legislation for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV). The legislation clearly only regulates vehicles of higher autonomy, that is vehicles which are ‘capable of…driving themselves’, interestingly these vehicles are currently not available on public roads, meaning that the legislation is predictive of future challenges. Moreover, the legislation is rather broad, with an absence of precise definitions or application, such breadth is clearly to ensure that the legislation remains connected to the technology at a later date. The UK has clearly been proactive in its approach, however concerns are evident around the fact that the UK, in its’ attempt to legislate ahead of the arrival of the technology, is likely to cause confusion due to the unclear nature of the AEVA 2018’s provisions. Both the issues of regulatory connection and proactive law are distinct areas of academic study which have not, as of yet been explored together in relation to a piece of legislation. The study of these issues in relation to the AEVA 2018 in this paper will further discuss the difficulty in balancing these. This paper will explore some of the insurance and liability difficulties with the current AEVA 2018. It will further uniquely discuss solutions to these challenges taking into account regulatory connection and proactive law

Intellectual Property, Open Science and Research Biobanks

In biomedical research and translational medicine, the ancient war between exclusivity (private control over information) and access to information is proposing again on a new battlefield: research biobanks. The latter are becoming increasingly important (one of the ten ideas changing the world, according to Time magazine) since they allow to collect, store and distribute in a secure and professional way a critical mass of human biological samples for research purposes. Tissues and related data are fundamental for the development of the biomedical research and the emerging field of translational medicine: they represent the “raw material” for every kind of biomedical study. For this reason, it is crucial to understand the boundaries of Intellectual Property (IP) in this prickly context. In fact, both data sharing and collaborative research have become an imperative in contemporary open science, whose development depends inextricably on: the opportunities to access and use data, the possibility of sharing practices between communities, the cross-checking of information and results and, chiefly, interactions with experts in different fields of knowledge. Data sharing allows both to spread the costs of analytical results that researchers cannot achieve working individually and, if properly managed, to avoid the duplication of research. These advantages are crucial: access to a common pool of pre-competitive data and the possibility to endorse follow-on research projects are fundamental for the progress of biomedicine. This is why the "open movement" is also spreading in the biobank's field. After an overview of the complex interactions among the different stakeholders involved in the process of information and data production, as well as of the main obstacles to the promotion of data sharing (i.e., the appropriability of biological samples and information, the privacy of participants, the lack of interoperability), we will firstly clarify some blurring in language, in particular concerning concepts often mixed up, such as “open source” and “open access”. The aim is to understand whether and to what extent we can apply these concepts to the biomedical field. Afterwards, adopting a comparative perspective, we will analyze the main features of the open models – in particular, the Open Research Data model – which have been proposed in literature for the promotion of data sharing in the field of research biobanks. After such an analysis, we will suggest some recommendations in order to rebalance the clash between exclusivity - the paradigm characterizing the evolution of intellectual property over the last three centuries - and the actual needs for access to knowledge. We argue that the key factor in this balance may come from the right interaction between IP, social norms and contracts. In particular, we need to combine the incentives and the reward mechanisms characterizing scientific communities with data sharing imperative

Copyright as Monopoly: The Italian Fire Under the Ashes

This essay provides an overview of some research that is in its early stages. The principal purpose of the authors is to understand whether, in a Continental European legal system such as the Italian one – traditionally led by a strong historical and normative vision of copyright (or author’s right) as natural right and nowadays influenced by the EU propertization trend – it is yet possible to foresee a different approach that is prone to interpreting the exclusivity of copyright in terms of monopoly. The latter approach, to some extent, might in fact be more relevant to restricting copyright protection by limiting the exclusive rights (ius excludendi alios) while supporting the public interest. Besides, the vision of “copyright as monopoly” seems in particular to play an overriding role within the digital context, where property is less apt in terms of the promotion and sharing of knowledge and, on the contrary, monopolistic jeopardy is sensibly flourishing

Limiting Anticompetitive Government Interventions that Benefit Special Interests

When government regulates, it may either intentionally or unintentionally generate restraints that reduce competition ( public restraints ). Public restraints allow a business to cloak its action in government authority and to immunize it from antitrust regulation. Private businesses may misuse the government\u27s grant of antitrust immunity to facilitate behavior that benefits businesses at consumers\u27 expense. One way is by obtaining government grants of immunity from antitrust scrutiny. A recent series of Supreme Court decisions has made this situation worse by limiting the reach of antitrust law in favor of sector regulation. This is true even though the Supreme Court refers to antitrust law as the Magna Carta of free enterprise. Yet the choice of sector regulation over antitrust regulation may have deleterious effects on consumers. This Article offers a new contribution to the extensive literature on the globalization of antitrust law. The present Article focuses both on the processes of creating public restraints, as well as upon the negative impacts of these restraints. Government can exempt a company from antitrust regulation, which allows the firm unbridled discretion to monopolize and harm consumers. Much of the literature focuses on the globalization of private anticompetitive conduct by businesses across jurisdictions. The focus of this Article, the issue of government intervention in the economy and its competitive impacts, has taken on renewed importance as the global financial crisis has led countries to provide various benefits to favored companies, which may distort competition. Distorting competition may keep the world in recession longer, as countries may retaliate with new distortions of their own, creating a downward spiral for the global economy. Thus, local solutions may cause international problems, and require international resolutions

The role of law in global value chains: a research manifesto

Most scholars attribute the development and ubiquity of global value chains to economic forces, treating law as an exogenous factor, if at all. By contrast, we assert the centrality of legal regimes and private ordering mechanisms to the creation, structure, geography, distributive effects and governance of Global Value Chains (GVCs), and thereby seek to establish the study of law and GVCs as rich and important terrain for research in its own righ

The role of law in global value chains: a research manifesto

Most scholars attribute the development and ubiquity of global value chains to economic forces, treating law as an exogenous factor, if at all. By contrast, we assert the centrality of legal regimes and private ordering mechanisms to the creation, structure, geography, distributive effects and governance of Global Value Chains (GVCs), and thereby seek to establish the study of law and GVCs as rich and important terrain for research in its own righ

Mapping the regulatory landscape of AI in healthcare in Africa

Introduction: Artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced technology has seen unprecedented expansion in the recent past. This growth brings with it huge opportunities for the positive transformation of the economy, business, healthcare, and society. However, a critical question is whether, and to what extent, regulatory measures and mechanisms have been implemented to safeguard its design, development, and deployment. This paper offers a scoping exercise that maps the regulatory landscape of AI in healthcare (including health research) in certain African countries.Methods: This research is conducted across 12 African countries: Botswana, Cameroon, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. As limited specific AI legislation is found in these African countries, and because AI is informed by ancillary regulatory frameworks, we include data protection, digital health, consumer protection, and intellectual property in our research. A scoping review method was applied with a manual search of digital libraries with search terms customised for each repository consisting of core search terms for the various topics, including, among others, “law,” “regulation,” “artificial intelligence,” “data protection,” “intellectual property,” and “digital health”.Results and discussion: Analysis of the data demonstrated that while in the African countries under investigation there is no sui generis AI regulation, recent developments were found in areas that inform AI adoption, including in digital health, data protection, consumer protection, and intellectual property. Our findings highlight the fragmentation of the African AI regulatory landscape and illustrate the importance of continued AI regulatory development to ensure that Africa is well positioned for future AI adoption in health

Antitrust, Institutions, and Merger Control

This Article makes two primary contributions to the antitrust literature. First, it identifies the dynamic interrelationship across antitrust institutions. Second, it provides new empirical evidence from practitioner surveys to explore how the dynamic institutional interrelationship plays out in the area of merger control. This Article provides a descriptive, analytical overview of the various institutions to better frame the larger institutional interrelations for a comparative institutional analysis. In the next Part it examines mergers as a case study of how one might apply antitrust institutional analysis across these different kinds and levels of antitrust institutions. The Article utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methods based on survey data of antitrust practitioners on merger issues to better understand institutional choice and the decision-making process. The surveys reveal results that run counter to the popular antitrust discourse about the level of merger enforcement under Bush. Slightly more than half of all practitioners surveyed found no change in merger enforcement under Bush in their own practice and the vast majority of the rest found a change in enforcement to be merely at the margins. The Article concludes with observations from the case study and appeals for more theoretical and empirical work in antitrust institutional analysis