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Editor-in-Chief Associate Print Editor Associate Online Editor Contact Section
Section of Science and Technology Law Officers Chair Chair-Elect Vice Chair Secretary Budget Officer Section Delegates
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IN THIS ISSUE JANUARY 2001
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The Internet Governance Committee is getting started. In mid-October, a letter went out to all members, suggesting some topics for discussion and asking for input on a few of the knotty problems facing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The suggested topics are:
Soon after these questions were posed, an intriguing draft of a law review article was posted on the Web by Professor Michael Froomkin of the University of Miami School of law. The draft, available at http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/icann.pdf is 168 pages long, but well worth reading both for the combatants and the on-lookers in the domain name wars. Any member of the Section who would be interested in participating in the discussions is welcome. Please send your email address to David Maher, Chair of the Committee, at dwm@sonnenschein.com. E-Privacy Law
Committee Targets the E-Commerce Legal Issue Facing Every Client
The privacy of information about individuals is fast becoming one of the most important e-commerce legal issues:
As the commercial world goes online, virtually every client - whether a bricks-and-mortar company, Internet start-up, or government entity - will face e-privacy issues. Thanks to websites and computer technology, never has it been so easy to collect, reproduce, and disseminate information about individuals. Never have companies and government entities faced such daunting privacy issues regarding the increasingly indispensable information now within their reach. Yet those who seize the wealth of information that pervades the e-commerce world without first addressing the attendant privacy issues may get more than they bargained for, both in terms of legal liability and adverse publicity that hit the bottom line. That is where the E-Privacy Law Committee comes in. A newly launched committee in the E-Commerce Law Division of the Section, the E-Privacy Law Committee is already nearly 200 strong and rapidly growing. Designed for chief privacy officers and attorneys alike, this committee explores the pivotal electronic privacy and data protection issues associated with doing business in an e-commerce world, including:
The committee will take on a number of projects, including development of best practices and guidelines regarding privacy, taking positions on various issues to influence public policy, and preparing relevant content for the ABA website and for publication. We have also launched a listserve to disseminate late-breaking privacy legal develop-ments, discuss approaches to various privacy issues, post links to key privacy law resources, and alert members regarding committee meetings and initiatives. We hope that this listserve and the committee will provide a much-needed source of information for chief privacy officers and attorneys faced with the task of managing their clients' legal risks relating to privacy and e-commerce - an area where there is little precedent. I serve as the chair of this new committee, and Ivan Fong serves as the vice-chair, and you can reach us as follows: Ruth Hill
Bro (Chair, E-Privacy Law Committee, E-Commerce Law Division) Ivan
Fong (Vice-Chair, E-Privacy Law Committee,
E-Commerce Law Division) Sign up for the E-Privacy Law Committee by one of the following means: http://www.abanet.org/scitech/cmtejoin.html; OR 800-285-2221; OR sciencetech@abanet.org. BIOTECHNOLOGY SUBCOMMITTEE TACKLES LAW
IN THE AGE OF BIOLOGY Where are the legal issues in the Age of Biology? Of course, they are where they've always been when scientific discovery is converted into commercial return, with intellectual property clearly in the spotlight (especially lately) as the tripwire of legal process at that point of conversion. In fact, intellectual property rules define not just what is owned (and by whom) but what is ownable, by distinguishing between that which belongs to us all (i.e., laws or products of nature, mathematical formulas) and what may be claimed by the one (or the few). But this sense of ownership, so often presented as merely the ability to deny others the economic benefit of an invention, has struck some as inapposite when applied to apparently parcel the human genome like a Yukon gold field. Anyway, an asset-centric jurisprudence suggested by intellectual property law may not best capture, or fully respond to, the profoundly intellectual -- and, potentially, social -- transformation to be wrought by the revolution in life sciences now enveloping us. Through the fusion of biology and information technology, we may see an analysis of the cause and progress of disease proceed with the authority and conclusiveness of the calculus that describes the arc of a curve ball. But to achieve that precision, and harness the capacity for therapeutic intervention it implies, researchers will require access to troves of biological information. The price of discernment in fathoming the genetic and molecular processes that run the gamut of clinical outcomes from normal to diseased is access to information on a scale that could test the very idea of privacy (not to mention data storage). In order to cure the one (who could be any of us), we need to amalgamate the medical and biological information of the many (although who the rest of us are is immaterial), as we all constitute a biological collective of substantial homogeneity. The accumu-lated data may erode the idea of biological individuality. Must political individuality wither before or with it for the biomedical age to run its course? If not, where is the balance between individual autonomy and the requirements of rigorous scientific inquiry leading to therapeutic invention? Reasoning from established practice, already the protection of privacy is presented as a process of assigning and valuing property rights. When each person's biological information is of equally nominal value (although of inestimable worth in the aggregate), is this really the best we can do to understand the problem and articulate a dynamic solution? Our modest ambition is to cast the Biotechnology Subcommittee as a point of departure for engaging the bio-legal questions of the new Age. We welcome your ideas for conference seminars, monographs, or other projects, and especially your perspective on law in the company of science in pursuit of a new paradigm of medicine (and maybe a few IPOs along the way). Please contact: Julie Fleming,
Esq., Chair David Smith,
Vice-Chair
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The E-Commerce Legal Arsenal: Practitioner
Agreements and Checklists This spring, the Electronic Commerce Law Division of the Section plans to publish The E-Commerce Legal Arsenal: Practitioner Agreements and Checklists. Drawing on precedents provided by attorneys throughout the United States and Canada, this collaborative compilation and its accompanying CD-ROM will provide sample contracts and checklists for a wide array of e-commerce transactions. A core group of trailblazers already has volunteered to contribute from their precedent files to produce what we hope will be an unparalleled e-commerce law resource. These leadership contributors include: Associations: Scott Lange, National Automated Clearinghouse Association (NACHA) Scott Edwards and Ken Wasch,Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Companies: Marty Delano, Andersen Consulting LLP/Accenture Ruven Schwartz, CertifiedTime, Inc. Celeste Callaghan, Daimler-Chrysler Corporation William J. Bowe and Eugene Klein, Encyclopaedia Britannica/Britannica.com Stephen Bisbee, EOriginals, Inc. Kathy Bryan, Motorola, Inc. Kareem M. Irfan, Square D Co. - Schneider Electric North America Eric (Rick) Blumsack, Stream International Inc. Clint N. Smith, UUNET Technologies, Inc. Peter Rill, Zurich Kemper Life Government: Brian Hengesbaugh, U.S. Department of Commerce Joseph Wackerman, U.S. Postal Service Law Firms: Terrence P. Maher, Abrahams Kaslow & Cassman (Omaha) Ruth Hill Bro and Thomas J. Smedinghoff, Baker & McKenzie (Chicago) Andrew R. Basile, Cooley Godward LLP (San Francisco) Mark E. Plotkin, Covington & Burling (Washington, D.C.) Charles Lee Mudd, Jr., Cummings & Lockwood (Stamford) Richard L. Field, Richard L. Field, Esq. (Cliffside Park, New Jersey) Michael Power, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP (Ottawa, Ontario) Leonard Ferber, Katten Muchin Zavis (Chicago) George Paul and Todd W. Coleman, Bruce E. Samuels Lewis & Roca (Phoenix) Ian C. Ballon, Mannatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP (Palo Alto) Brian Smith, Mayer Brown & Platt (Washington, D.C.) Charles Merrill, McCarter & English, LLP (Newark) Michael D. Scott, Perkins Coie LLP (Santa Monica) Gregory J. Glover, Ropes & Gray (Washington, D.C.) William B. Baker, Wiley, Rein & Fielding (Washington, D.C.) Section members will receive a letter in early January from me, as the editor of this book, asking them to consider following the example of these leadership contributors by providing e-commerce contracts or checklists (not "model" contracts or the ultimate form agreement, though those would certainly be welcome, but rather actual documents that you have drafted and used). All contributors will receive a complimentary copy of the finished product, and each contributor's name and that of the contributor's organization will be listed at the beginning of the book but will not appear on or be identified with the contracts or checklists themselves. The deadline for submissions is February 10, 2001. Those with questions or who would like to contribute should contact: Ruth Hill
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