The Supreme Court Knows Nothing About Technology [e76]

Nasir and Matt discuss how the Supreme Court will address the upcoming technology based cases on the docket. They also answer, "What is the difference between a Trademark and Service Mark? Which do I need for my advertising golf cart business?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to our email address. MATT: Which is…? NASIR: Oh, ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: I’m glad I’m not a guest anymore, or else I would have not known that. NASIR: Yes, you’ve been upgraded once again to co-host but, at any time, that is subject to change. MATT: Great. We’ll see what happens. I think, last week, I was fine on Monday. And then, for some reason, I got downgraded Wednesday and Friday. I don’t know what happened. NASIR: Well, you listened to Monday’s episode, right? Obviously, you should do some self-reflection there. MATT: That’s true, yeah. I have to go back. I didn’t hear anything but I’ll go back and listen a second time. All right, well, I think this is going to gain a lot of publicity here as we get closer to it. We usually don’t talk about specific stories so much but I kind of need to talk about this story because it paints the picture as a whole. There’s all these big cases that are going to hit the Supreme Court here pretty soon – these big cases that deal with tech. What this article is basically saying is these nine people aren’t the best people to be making huge tech decisions and, like I said, it’s the Supreme Court. This is going to be the final word here and this is basically saying these aren’t the best nine people for making decisions on tech, on what the law is supposed to be. You know, he kind of details some of the justices. Some of this might be overblown. It talks about a couple of them really aren’t sure, haven’t really gotten to email, find Facebook and Twitter a challenge. I don’t know how true any of this is. I mean, I find it hard to believe that they don’t know how to use email. I don’t care how old you are. They’re obviously all pretty bright so I think they can figure it out and stuff like that. But, I mean, this is an interesting topic. Have you thought about this at all? Because I think it is going to be interesting if they get into some really complex issues, but this isn’t the first time, I’m sure, they’ve encountered issues they weren’t familiar with. NASIR: Yeah, you’re right. It’s not the first time but, I think, in general, the Supreme Court is generally going to be older and they’re going to be of some – I think, in my personal opinion – kind of a status of which they’re not as in touch with most of the US population and I think, in general, whether it’s technology or not, a lot of people feel that way that a lot of the decisions that come out of the Supreme Court are sometimes a little bit distant from what’s actually going on in the ground. Eventually, that usually catches up. It just takes a little bit of time. But the system design to the law has not changed too quickly. But, from my perspective, one thing I think about technology is, when it comes to defamation. For example, the statute of limitations – and I’m not even talking about the Supreme Court but in most appellate jurisdictions in the state – for the statute of limitations for defamation is one year in most states, okay? That means that you have one year from the date of publication to bring your claim. Most states follow a single publication meaning it doesn’t matter if it’s republished over and over again. They look at the first publication. But where this comes into play that I think the law has not caught up with technology is that, when someone posts a defamatory comment online as opposed to a newspaper or a story,

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