Licensing Open Government Data

Governments around the world create and collect an enormous and wide-ranging amount of data. For various social, political, and economic reasons, open data has become a popular government practice and international movement in recent years. It is estimated that more than 250 national or local governments from around 50 developed and developing countries have launched open government data (OGD) initiatives. Open data policies are widely recognized as a tool to foster government transparency and economic growth. Businesses have also developed innovative applications, products, and services based on OGD. Although OGD is a global movement, it faces a number of unsolved legal hurdles. Among others, it is critically important for participating governments to devise the most appropriate legal means of releasing data, and intellectual property (IP) licensing has been viewed as one of the main obstacles for governments in this regard. Consequently, entrepreneurs may hesitate to use or reuse government data if there is no reliable licensing or clear legal arrangement governing it. This Article focuses on the legal issues associated with OGD licenses. Different government agencies have chosen different licensing terms to manage the release of their data. This study compares current open data licenses and argues that licensing terms reflect policy considerations, which are quite different from those contemplated in business transactions or shared in typical commons communities. This Article investigates the ambiguous legal status of data together with the new wave of OGD, which concerns some fundamental IP questions not covered by, or analyzed in depth in, the current literature. Moreover, this study suggests that governments should choose or adapt OGD licenses according to their own IP regimes. For example, whether a database right is protected as a sui generis right and whether moral rights are waivable in the subject jurisdiction both lead to licensing terms being designed differently. In the end, this Article argues that the design or choice of OGD license forms an important element of information policy; governments, therefore, should make this decision in accordance with their policy goals and in compliance with their own jurisdictions’ IP laws

Implementing the FRAND Standard in China

The modern world relies on technical standards, most of which involve standard-essential patents (SEPs). To balance SEP holders\u27fair compensation with standard implementers\u27 access to standardized technologies, standard-setting organizations (SSOs) generally require that their members commit to license their SEPs on a fair, reasonable,and non-discriminatory (FRAND) basis. In recent years, the communications industry has seen a growing amount of litigation concerning SEPs and FRAND in many jurisdictions. As China has grown into a major player and market in the worldwide communications business, its public policy, court decisions, and private business strategies concerning SEPs and FRAND are likely to have a huge global impact in the high-technology sector. The high-profile Huawei v. IDC is the first Chinese court decision ruling on FRAND-encumbered SEPs issues. This is also the first Asian case in which the court determined a FRAND royalty rate to calculate the fee paid by the standard implementer to the SEP holder. Based on the Chinese government\u27s policy toward technical standards and the case of Huawei, this Article identifies two distinguishing features in China\u27s encounter with standard-related issues. The first is the active role played by the government in domestic standard-setting activities, while the second is Chinese courts\u27 civil law approach, associated with good faith, to the enforcement of FRAND commitments. Based on a comparative and critical viewpoint, this Article uses Huawei as an example to illustrate the challenges and perplexities for the judicial determination of a FRAND rate. The reasoning in Huawei is far from sufficient and satisfactory, and it is unclear whether the Chinese courts are tasked to implement the government\u27s industrial policy. Nonetheless, Huawei did identify some crucial factors concerning FRAND and SEPs, and it has had a significant impact on Chinese related standard-setting activities

The Ping-Pong Olympics of Antisuit Injunction in FRAND Litigation

In the past two years, antisuit injunctions (ASIs) and subsequent legal proceedings associated with standard-essential patents (SEPs) subject to fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) commitments have proliferated in multiple jurisdictions. This phenomenon reveals not only the transnational nature of technical standards and FRAND-encumbered SEPs but also the jurisdictional tension between different national courts. This Article explains the emergence of ASIs in FRAND scenarios and recent developments in six jurisdictions with major interests in standard development and adoption. Countries have developed different approaches to ASIs based on their own domestic rules and interests. We believe that to promote technical compatibility and international comity, it is necessary to facilitate legal compatibility between jurisdictions at the policy level. Currently, courts in multiple jurisdictions are competing to grant ASIs and anti-anti-suit injunctions (AASIs), leading to fragmented decisions and significant costs for global standardization. We propose to include an exclusive forum selection clause in the policy documents of standard-setting organizations (SSOs) to reduce undesirable transaction costs stemming from ASIs and subsequent legal actions. Our proposal is more realistic and cost-effective than others concerning FRAND dispute resolution

Comparative Cybersecurity Law in Socialist Asia

This Article is a comparative study of the cybersecurity laws adopted in China and Vietnam in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The two laws both converge and diverge. Their convergences include the stringent regulation of banned acts, network operators, critical infrastructure, data localization, and personal data. These are all shaped by the immediate diffusion of China\u27s Cybersecurity Law in Vietnam and broader structural factors: namely, the common features of the socialist state, socialist legality, and the statist approach to human rights. The foundational divergence is between the Chinese notion of cybersecurity sovereignty and the Vietnamese notion of national cyberspace, which is due to the global diffusion of cybersecurity law in Vietnam and the differences in technological infrastructure and developmental approaches-Chinese exceptionalism and Vietnamese universalism. This Article has implications for comparative law generally and comparative cybersecurity law particularly

Real-Name Registration Rules and the Fading Digital Anonymity in China

China has implemented comprehensive online real-name registration rules, which require Internet users to disclose their identities. Chinese national law has required most online service providers to implement real-name registration since 2012. This article uses the real-name registration rules to illustrate the supremacy and limitations of the Network Authoritarian Model (NAM), an approach leveraging corporate resources for political surveillance and occasionally adopted by the Chinese party-state. By addressing the evolution of real-name registration rules in China, this article illustrates the party-state’s gradual efforts in both eliminating cyberspace anonymity and etching Chinese characteristics on the architecture of the Internet. Although the Chinese government has faced serious challenges in enforcing the real-name registration policy and current enforcement is far from satisfactory, China is not alone in promoting such a policy. Major Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, have expressed similar interests in requiring users to register their real names. Moreover, policymakers in developed and developing countries are exploring similarly themed regulations and China, therefore, may well be in the vanguard of the global movement for online real-name registration. Nonetheless, requiring real-name registration in China has not only created huge costs for Internet companies, but also given rise to fierce controversy associated with free speech, privacy, and law enforcement. In this article, we identify several important legal and policy implications of the Chinese real-name registration policy. We also illustrate the foremost predicament currently faced by the Chinese party-state in enforcing the policy. This analysis argues that China may create a “spillover effect” in jurisdictions outside China as well as in the global Internet architecture

Shifting IP Battlegrounds in the U.S.–China Trade War

Intellectual property (“IP”) represents one of the main controversies of U.S.– China trade relations in the past three decades and remains one of the core issues behind the two countries’ recent trade frictions. This Article provides an overview of the current IP debates between the two largest economies in the world. It illustrates the transformation of the Chinese government’s role from inactive IP law enforcer to active facilitator of access to and acquisition of foreign technologies. This study further explains how China’s approach to learning western technologies has transformed from low-end imitation to gaining a controlling stake in foreign companies via joint ventures or outbound investments. More importantly, this Article discusses the legal and policy implications of the IP issues in this trade war. I argue that the recent IP trade war represents the struggle for global technological leadership as well as a new institutional competition in the post-Cold War era. Moreover, China’s “economic aggression,” as the United States understands it, has caused a number of unsolved issues for the international IP regime, which include the justification of China’s controversial IP policies for the purpose of industrial catch-up as well as the evidentiary and legal bases for holding China liable for its economic aggression in relation to IP

Covenant design in financial contracts: a case study of the private equity acquisition of HCA

A buyout deal involves several parties, including private equity firms, the target company, and lending banks. All these parties are legally connected by contractual arrangements, and covenants among all interest parties are important. However, a comprehensive study on designing covenants among parties in a buyout deal to achieve commitment and avoid risk in closing a deal is seldom seen in current literature. By investigating one of the world's largest buyout deals – the acquisition of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), this paper not only probes into the design of contracts and covenant, but also provides several managerial implications. This paper concludes that well-designed covenants in buy-out deals can appropriately align all participants’ diversified interests

Investigation of Low-Cost Surface Processing Techniques for Large-Size Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cells

The subject of the present work is to develop a simple and effective method of enhancing conversion efficiency in large-size solar cells using multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafer. In this work, industrial-type mc-Si solar cells with area of 125×125 mm2 were acid etched to produce simultaneously POCl3 emitters and silicon nitride deposition by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposited (PECVD). The study of surface morphology and reflectivity of different mc-Si etched surfaces has also been discussed in this research. Using our optimal acid etching solution ratio, we are able to fabricate mc-Si solar cells of 16.34% conversion efficiency with double layers silicon nitride (Si3N4) coating. From our experiment, we find that depositing double layers silicon nitride coating on mc-Si solar cells can get the optimal performance parameters. Open circuit (Voc) is 616 mV, short circuit current (Jsc) is 34.1 mA/cm2, and minority carrier diffusion length is 474.16 μm. The isotropic texturing and silicon nitride layers coating approach contribute to lowering cost and achieving high efficiency in mass production

Fine-mapping of lipid regions in global populations discovers ethnic-specific signals and refines previously identified lipid loci

Genome-wide association studies have identified over 150 loci associated with lipid traits, however, no large-scale studies exist for Hispanics and other minority populations. Additionally, the genetic architecture of lipid-influencing loci remains largely unknown. We performed one of the most racially/ethnically diverse fine-mapping genetic studies of HDL-C, LDL-C, and triglycerides to-date using SNPs on the MetaboChip array on 54,119 individuals: 21,304 African Americans, 19,829 Hispanic Americans, 12,456 Asians, and 530 American Indians. The majority of signals found in these groups generalize to European Americans. While we uncovered signals unique to racial/ethnic populations, we also observed systematically consistent lipid associations across these groups. In African Americans, we identified three novel signals associated with HDL-C (LPL, APOA5, LCAT) and two associated with LDL-C (ABCG8, DHODH). In addition, using this population, we refined the location for 16 out of the 58 known MetaboChip lipid loci. These results can guide tailored screening efforts, reveal population-specific responses to lipid-lowering medications, and aid in the development of new targeted drug therapies