In this edition of the Priori Digest, a weekly look at what’s happening in law and technology, we look at Facebook turning 15, new smart fridges being trialed by Walgreens that let them infer the demographic information of customers, and a federal trademark case involving a 1990s fashion brand with interesting First Amendment implications. To get the digest straight to your inbox, sign up here. Enjoy!
Legal
- A streetwear brand that has been consistently denied a federal trademark for being too “scandalous” will be having its case heard by the Supreme Court in spring. The Justices will decide how much “scandalous” speech is protected by the First Amendment (hopefully clearer than Justice Potter Stewart’s infamous concurrence in Jacobellis v. Ohio in which the Court found that the Constitution protects obscenity except hard core pornography: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.")
- Sunday’s Super Bowl was the first in which sports gambling is legal in seven states other than Nevada
- What the 2018 patent litigation statistics can show us
Tech
- What is 5G and what difference will it make?
- Meet the man who’s edited a third of all English language pages on Wikipedia
- Walgreens is piloting a line of smart fridges equipped with cameras that scan shoppers’ faces and make inferences on their age and gender
Facebook Turns 15
- 15 moments that defined Facebook’s first 15 years
- Since its inception, user growth has been the key metric used to define success at Facebook. Now over 2.3 billion people use the service every month
- Four fascinating charts that track Facebook’s staggering growth
- This thought-provoking piece discusses how Facebook has altered our social life and influenced our real-life friendships
- Facebook comes under fresh criticism for its data-privacy practices
Legal Trivia
- Which U.S. state stipulates in law how the state name should be pronounced? Find out here
Legal & Tech Cartoons
By the numbers
- 25: The 25 biggest legal lateral moves of 2018
- 38.9 billion: The percentage of hospitals in the U.S. that still use pagers
- 26: The number of times that you can now forward a message on Whatsapp. Previously, a WhatsApp user could forward a message to 20 individuals or groups
