Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, could become the first justice with a background in Intellectual Property law, as well as a history of precedent-setting rulings on cyberlaw issues. Prior to joining the bench, Judge Sotomayor was a private IP lawyer, and her cyberlaw decisions ranged from copyrights in a digitized world to warrantless computer searches, so-called click-wrap agreements and the Patriot Act.

Judge Sotomayor’s 1997 ruling in Tasini vs. New York Times (holding that newspapers and electronic databases were within their rights under 17 U.S.C. § 201(c) to reproduce freelancers' articles) was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, 7-2 (Dissenting: Stevens, Breyer). If confirmed, Judge Sotomayor could bring an interesting perspective to the SCOTUS bench.

Sources:

http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/05/judge-sotomayors-ip-background.php
Tasini vs. New York Times, et al, 972 F. Supp. 804 (1997)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/sotomayor/
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/05/leventhal.pdf
http://pub.bna.com/eclr/017860.pdf

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