Competition

General Motor’s $500 Million Investment in Lyft: A Reminder to State Legislatures to Quickly Act to Resolve Legal Issues Surrounding Self-Driving Cars

Emily Harrison, MJLST Editor-in-Chief

On January 4, 2016, General Motors’ (G.M.) invested $500 million in Lyft, a privately held ridesharing service. G.M. also pledged to collaborate with Lyft in order to create a readily accessible network of self-driving cars. According to the New York Times, G.M.’s investment represents the “single largest direct investment by an auto manufacturer into a ride-hailing company in the United States . . . .” So why exactly did General Motors, one of the world’s largest automakers, contribute such a significant amount of capital to a business that could eventually cause a decrease in the number of cars on the road?

The short answer is that G.M. views its investment in Lyft as a way to situate itself in a competitive position in the changing transportation industry. As John Zimmer, president of Lyft, said in an interview, the future of cars will not be based on individual ownership: “We strongly believe that autonomous vehicle go-to-market strategy is through a network, not through individual car ownership.” In addition, this partnership will allow G.M. to augment its current profits. The president of G.M., Daniel Ammann, explained that G.M.’s ‘core profit’ predominately comes from cars that are sold outside of the types of urban environments in which Lyft conducts its main operations. Therefore, G.M. can capitalize on its investments by aligning itself at the forefront of this burgeoning automated vehicle industry.

A transition to a network of self-driving cars raises a variety of legal implications, particularly with respect to assigning liability. As Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology Volume 16, Issue 2 author Sarah Aue Palodichuk notes in her article, “Driving into the Digital Age: How SDVs Will Change the Law and its Enforcement,”: “[a]utomated vehicles will eliminate traffic offenses, create traffic offenses, and change the implications of everything from who is driving to how violations are defined.” Underlying all of these changes is the question: who or what is responsible for the operation of self-driving cars? In some states, for example, there must be a human operator who is capable of manual control of the vehicle. As additional states begin to adopt legislation with respect to self-driving cars, it is foreseeable that there will be great debate as to who or what is responsible for purposes of liability. Yet, in the meantime, G.M.’s significant investment in Lyft signals to consumers and state legislators that these issues will need to be resolved quickly, as the automotive industry is moving full-speed ahead.


Just Not Mayo

Nolan Hudalla, MJSLT Staffer

In August 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning letter to Hampton Creek Foods, the makers of the popular vegan mayonnaise substitute “Just Mayo.” This letter informed the company that its product had a misleading name and label imagery, because, by FDA regulation, mayonnaise must contain one or more eggs. This opinion by the FDA was in response to a high-profile lawsuit brought against Hampton Creek by Unilever (the makers of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise) and a similar class action filed in Florida state court, both alleging violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and unjust enrichment. But, in an era of healthier alternatives – a world of Whole Foods, Thanksgiving Tofurky, and even eggless mayo – is the FDA missing the point? Instead of relying on food recipes enshrined in agency regulations from the 1970’s to identify whether an eggless substitute is mayonnaise or not, maybe the FDA needs to modernize its definitions instead.

In an effort to demonstrate just how committed the government is to keeping Just Mayo from poaching the traditional mayo market, consider the American Egg Board’s (AEB) response to Just Mayo. The AEB, a group appointed by the US Department of Agriculture, may have used public funds to conspire against Just Mayo. According to a Guardian article, “the government-backed egg lobby had organized a concerted effort to tackle Hampton Creek, a company described in leaked emails as a ‘major threat’ and ‘crisis’ for the $5.5bn-a-year egg industry.” This investigation led to the resignation of the AEB’s CEO Joanne Ivy. In addition, the FDA sent Just Mayo its warning letter despite an enormous show of popular support against the agency’s policy. Over 112,000 petitioners scrambled to sign a petition started by Food Network star Andrew Zimmern entitled “Stop Bullying Sustainable Food Companies,” to Unilever Chairman Michael Treschow. This public uprising boiled to the point that Unilever voluntarily dropped its initial lawsuit within two days of filing.

Even if the Florida state court suit amounts to nothing, this issue will not be over easy for the FDA. As demonstrated by the petition, consumer preferences are changing, and not just for mayonnaise. Similar battles are being fought over peanut butter, milk, yogurt, and ice cream. Retail sales of vegan products rose by over 6% last year, and 36% of U.S. consumers use milk or meat alternatives. This raises the question of whether it is really worth all of the government’s money and effort to maintain 1970’s ideas of food. Instead of deviling these modern alternatives, maybe the FDA should buy in too. After all, it’s just mayo.


Supreme Court to Hear Willful Infringement Cases: Will the Justices Clear the Way for Enhanced Damages for Patentees?

Na An, MJLST Staffer

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear two patent cases challenging the current Federal Circuit standard for proving willful infringement on October 19, 2015. The finding of willfulness allows judges to award triple damages, providing more leverage for patentees in licensing and settlement negotiations. The patent litigation world watches with great anticipation as the Court’s Octane Fitness decision rejected a similar rule for awarding attorney’s fees in patent cases last year.

The Federal Circuit established the current willfulness test in its landmark Seagate decision in 2007, which required the patentee to prove that there was an objectively high likelihood that the infringer’s actions constituted infringement and that the likelihood was either known or so obvious that it should have been known to the accused infringer. The Seagate two-prong test overruled decades of precedents that had imposed an affirmative duty on accused infringers to obtain opinion of counsel and posed a substantially heightened burden for a patentee seeking to establish willfulness. Later on, the Federal Circuit recognized the complexity of post-Seagate inquiry and held in Bard Peripheral Vascular that the threshold objective prong of the test is a question of law, reallocating the roles of the judge and jury in determining willfulness of the infringement. Consequently, as opposed to the traditional consideration of willfulness as a question of fact, a district court must now determine whether a reasonable person would have found there to be a high likelihood of infringement (first prong), while the jury determines the patent infringer’s subjective intent (second prong).

Upon a finding of willfulness, the court has discretion to increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed, as authorized in 35 U.S.C. § 284. This statutory provision is very similar to § 285, which grants the court power to award reasonable attorney fees in exceptional cases. Before the Supreme Court’s Octane Fitness decision last year, the Federal Circuit restricted its application of § 285 to cases, in which the losing party’s position was “objectively baseless” and brought in “subjective bad faith.” Octane Fitness rejected such a rigid rule and held that judges can decide to award fees when a case “stands out from others.” Seagate’s two-prong test bears a striking resemblance to pre-Octane fee inquiry, sparking much anticipation among practitioners and scholars that the high court would similarly strike down the restrictive willfulness test. The Court found its opportunity in Halo and Stryker.

Halo involves infringement of three US patents, which disclose “surface mount electronic packages containing transformers for mounting on a printed circuit board inside electronic devices.” The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of increased damages because the patentee failed to satisfy the objective prong of the Seagate test. Similar issues arose in Stryker. The patents in Stryker were directed to devices that deliver pressurized irrigation for different medical therapies, and the Federal Circuit again denied increased damages due to district court’s failure to undertake an objective assessment of the infringer’s defense. Interestingly, Judge Kathleen O’Malley, concurring in Halo, called for a complete reevaluation of the two-prong test for finding willful infringement, and she reasoned that increased damages and attorney fees should be grouped, given their analogous frameworks and statutory provisions. Therefore, in light of the Octane Fitness decision, the Seagate two-prong test merits reconsideration.

The Federal Circuit voted 8-2 in March not to reconsider the willfulness standard en banc in Halo; nevertheless, the Court granted certiorari without a sharp divide in the lower court. It signals that the Court is unlikely to retain the Seagate standard. But the question remains how much more flexible the new test will be. Will the Court use the same “stands out from others” language in Octane Fitness? Are the justices taking the second prong of the Seagate test away from juries? Or are we going back to the pre-Seagate rule that a mere notice of patent infringement triggers an affirmative duty on the defendant to obtain opinion of counsel? Additionally, the statutory language in § 284 says nothing about willfulness. Will the court give judges even broader discretion to award increased damages in absence of willfulness? If so, is there a danger of more forum shopping? We eagerly await the high court’s decision.


Marijuana Industry Continues to Search for Banking Solution

Neal Rasmussen, MJLST Managing Editor

While the legal marijuana industry continues to rapidly expand in the United States, a major question still looms: Where should the millions of dollars generated by the industry be placed? Up to this point the nation’s banks have refused to take money for fear of federal repercussions. The lack of banking is one of the biggest problems the industry currently has and creates a dangerous all cash environment. While it continues to be an industry dominated by cash vaults and armed guards, change could soon be on the way.

While the provisions of the unlicensed money remitter statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1960, the money laundering statutes, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956, 1957, and the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) still remain in effect with respect to marijuana-related business, the marijuana industry had hoped to take advantage of the new rules issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2014 which “clarifie[d] how financial institutions can provide services to marijuana-related businesses consistent with their BSA obligations, and aligns the information provided by financial institutions in BSA reports with federal and state law enforcement priorities.” In addition to the new rules, the Justice Department produced a memorandum calling for relaxed enforcement of the relevant federal banking laws so long as they followed the new rules. However, the most recent attempt by a Colorado state-chartered credit union, The Fourth Corner Credit Union, to take advantage of the new rules and memorandum has faced major opposition from the Federal Reserve Bank, who must provide clearance before the credit union can open.

The Federal Reserve Bank refused to grant the permission need to access the national banking system and The Fourth Corner Credit Union has sued in Federal Court demanding equal access to the federal system. While it remains unclear whether the presiding judge, R. Brooke Jackson, will hear the complaint, most view The Fourth Corner Credit Union as fighting a losing battle. Most believe that entering the federal banking system will be nearly impossible until marijuana becomes legal at the federal level. For now it will remain unclear as to where the industry should place its money.


The TPP – Commercial or Foreign Policy Victory?

Jing Han, MJLST Staffer

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed trade among twelve Pacific Rim countries, which are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, United States, Singapore and Vietnam, concerning a variety of matters of economic policy, about which agreement was reached on October 5, 2015 after 5 years of negotiations. The 12 countries including the United States of America have agreed to build a new cooperation structure through this agreement. TPP’s 30 chapters have set binding rules on everything from service-sector regulation, investment, patents and copyrights, government procurement, financial regulation, and labor and environmental standards, as well as trade in industrial goods and agriculture. The combined Gross Domestic Product-GDP of the world’s largest pact of these 12 countries is nearly 28 trillion dollars. Those dozen states account for roughly forty percent of global gross domestic product, thirty percent of global exports and twenty-five percent of global imports.

Some people believe that one of the reasons for the recent push for new trade initiatives is a feeling that the WTO system is not working. This view is probably not an uncommon one. But is it correct? It is worth looking at just what the WTO does, and how it compares to the TPP as a possible alternative trade agreement and organization.

First, all 159 WTO members have made promises not to charge tariffs above rates that are set out in legally binding schedules. The TPP does have the potential to go further than the WTO in terms of tariff reductions and services liberalization. Of course, such commitments would be preferential, only given to a handful of trading partners, and thus would not be truly free trade. There are significant economic benefits to having free trade cover as many countries as possible, including the avoidance of complex and trade-restricting rules of origin.

Second, WTO rules also discipline special tariffs imposed against dumping and subsidies. Through the WTO, these tariffs are subject to detailed rules to prevent them from being abused, which they frequently have been over the years. The TPP will not address anti-dumping/countervailing duties or subsidies at all. And the WTO’s rules on regulatory protectionism are already working quite well, so it is difficult to imagine what the TPP would do in this regard.

Third, WTO rules govern customs procedures, including valuation and classification issues, to prevent these procedures from being used as a disguised means of protection. Furthermore, WTO rules include general prohibitions on using domestic regulations and taxes for protectionist purposes. The WTO’s jurisprudence on these issues is widely respected, and WTO rulings have addressed a range of regulatory protectionism. The TPP would also go beyond the WTO in areas such as intellectual property protection, foreign investment protection, and environmental and labor regulation. But further is not necessarily better. These items have been added to the trade agenda to drum up new support. However, they have also stirred up a good deal of new opposition, and made trade negotiations more complex and difficult.

Fourth, Congress recognized “the growing significance of the Internet as a trading platform in international commerce” and instructed President Obama to achieve objectives concerning digital trade in goods and services and cross-border data flows. The Obama administration wants “digital trade rules-of-the-road” in the TPP agreement. These rules could mark a turning point in the global governance of digital commerce. The importance of digital technologies to trade has grown without multilateral rules keeping pace. The WTO is the main source of multilateral trade agreements, but it was established before the Internet transformed how companies produce, sell, and deliver products and services. In a declaration of 1998, WTO members agreed not to impose customs duties on electronic transactions and recognized the need to address e-commerce directly. However, the WTO’s e-commerce work program has not progressed much because WTO members disagree on various issues.

Fifth, beyond the commercial implications, many experts regard the TPP as a key part of American foreign policy. Amid the rise of China and its increasing exercise of political and military power in East Asia, the Obama administration has said it would turn its attention more to the East, the so-called pivot to Asia, in an effort to strengthen U.S influence in that region. The challenge for China, should it wish to join the TPP, is undertaking the reforms that the agreement would require. For instance, joining TPP will require opening markets in areas such as services and investment and agreeing to new rules in sensitive areas such as the role of state-owned enterprises and access to the Internet. That said, many of the reforms that becoming a TPP party would require are consistent with the internal reforms that China has already identified as being necessary, including reform of its financial sector, strengthening the role of services in the Chinese economy, and encouraging innovation.

In sum, The WTO is an excellent system. Its great strength is its multilateral framework, incorporating most of the world’s nations. However, with the advent of the 21st century, the limits of the WTO’s functions have become increasingly apparent. The Doha Round, marked by conflict between the opinions of developed and emerging nations and the subsequent stalling of negotiations, stands as a symbol of these limits. With more nations participating and more comprehensive liberalization being pursued, it is unavoidable that negotiations will face difficulties. In relation to the TPP, a former senior U.S. official is said to have commented that the U.S. sought to demonstrate its level of commitment to the Asia-Pacific region through its active involvement in the agreement negotiations. The Asia-Pacific region is becoming increasingly important to the U.S., and this fact is manifested in the nation’s initiatives in relation to the TPP. In this respect, the TPP has more political implications compared with its commercial considerations.


It’s Apple Season: Federal Circuit Court Rules for Apple in Patent Dispute, Requiring Samsung to Change Some of Its Technology Features

Emily Harrison, MJLST Editor-in-Chief

This month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit gave Apple its latest victory against its biggest competitor, Samsung. In May 2014, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California denied Apple’s motion for a permanent injunction to bar Samsung from using software or code tending to infringe patented features in Apple’s products. However, on September 17, 2015, the court in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., No. 2014-1802, 2015 WL 5449721 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 17, 2015), held that the lower court abused its discretion in failing to grant Apple the permanent injunction, and remanded the case to the lower court for reconsideration of the motion.

The current dispute between the competitors surrounds Apple’s patents covering its slide-to-unlock, autocorrect, and data detection features. The federal circuit notes that Apple has invested billions of dollars in introducing the iPhone. To decrease the risk associated with its large investments, Apple has applied for and received patents for much of the technology it has developed in the iPhone, including the features at issue. Furthermore, Apple filed a motion seeking permanent injunction that would bar Samsung from “making, using, selling, developing, advertising, or importing into the United States software or code capable of implementing the infringing features in its products.” The federal circuit found that Apple established a “causal nexus” between irreparable harm and Samsung’s infringement such that there was “some connection between infringing features and demand for competitor’s products,” Apple suffered irreparable harm, Apple lacked adequate remedy at law, and both the balance of hardships and public interest favored the injunction.

In determining the consequences of this decision, the court emphasizes the narrowness of this injunction: “This is not a case where the public would be deprived of Samsung’s product. Apple does not seek to enjoin the sale of lifesaving drugs, but to prevent Samsung from profiting from the unauthorized use of infringing features in its cellphones and tablets.” The court was also convinced that Samsung could remove the patented features without recalling products or disrupting customer use. Although the injunction is arguably narrow, the court’s decision may have a broad impact on product differentiation requirements with respect to complex technology. The federal circuit’s decision also signals a greater willingness to protect patent rights of inventors in the face of a key market rival.


Regulating the Sharing Economy: Fostering Innovation and Safety

Steven Groschen, MJLST Managing Editor

The sharing economy is a marketplace for individuals to exchange goods and services directly with one another. In the past, sharing economy participants, whom wished to lend their property and time directly to others, had the challenge of finding a way to connect with individuals seeking to borrow property and services. The internet and other modern communication systems have provided opportunities for overcoming this barrier. Consequently, the cost of matching a particular individual’s demand with another individual’s supply (i.e. transaction costs) within the sharing economy has been greatly reduced. As a result, sharing is quickly becoming a cost-effective and environmentally friendly option for ordinary consumers.

Not everyone is fond of the sharing economy movement. Long-established institutions and industries are experiencing increased competition by competitors whom are not always required to play by the same rules. For instance, the increasingly popular ride sharing system, Uber, has received scrutiny from players in the current taxi system. They argue that Uber is unfairly competing because it is not subject to the same regulations as traditional taxi drivers.

Regulators are challenged to find the optimal method of regulating the emerging sharing economy. Enacting regulations that are too strict will impede the innovation generated by sharing economy startup companies. On the other hand, regulations that are too lenient may threaten another core value: protecting the safety of consumers. Unregulated and non-centrally controlled systems of transportation run the risk of having a wide variance in outcomes. One Uber taxi driver may be perfectly safe, whereas another creates a hazard on the streets. Some are concerned there should be more government oversight and regulation addressing these risky drivers.

Professor Sofia Ranchordás suggests “establishing, broader, principle-based regulation[s]” is the answer to the legal problems created by the sharing economy. The use of principles rather than specific regulations acknowledges that technology is constantly changing. Broad regulations are designed to be more adaptable to changes in technology. As a result, this method of regulation protects two of the important goals of the sharing economy. First, bottom-up innovation is not stifled by rigid regulations that prohibit experimentation. Startup companies in the sharing economy are free to experiment so long as they stay within the boundaries of the broad principles. Second, there is more flexibility to create regulations addressing concerns for safety and general consumer protection. Regulators are not restricted to a narrow definition of what is “safe,” thus technology changes affecting safety are more easily managed.