Recent Supreme Court Decisions Significantly Impact Intellectual Property Law
The United States Supreme Court has issued two decisions recently that have caused serious waves in the intellectual property law field. The two decisions specifically discuss e-commerce and privacy online, and as such, have created new precedents in intellectual property law.
State Tax Implications for Online Retailers
In South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. the Supreme Court held that state governments may impose sales taxes on online purchases made within their state lines even if the seller does not maintain an actual corporeal location within state borders. More specifically, even if there is no brick-and-mortar location of that retailer, or even if the retailer wholly operates online, sales tax may be levied upon their goods.
This is a complete turnaround from an earlier 1992 ruling that required online retailers to have a significant or substantial presence in the state. While the taxes collected by the states may trickle down to consumers in some fashion, the burden on small online retailers will increase exponentially as they will have to implement significant infrastructure changes in order to be able to meet the tax standards of multiple states as well as accurately track where each purchaser is located.
Search Warrants Required for Retrieval of Smartphone Location Data
In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held that law enforcement is required to obtain search warrants before retrieving the location data from any smartphone.
In the decision, the Supreme Court distinguished accessing a smartphone’s location data from the “Third Party Doctrine,” which has historically given law enforcement the ability to request access to personal location data from “third parties” like phone companies for over four decades.
Instead, because the Supreme Court held that the “Third Party Doctrine” does not account for major advancements in technology that now allow smartphones to store the geolocation information of multiple individuals for years as opposed to the shorter periods of time that were previously accessed under the Third Party Doctrine, the Supreme Court held that a warrant must be in place before accessing s smartphone’s archive of location data.
Supreme Court Decision Commended as Privacy Victory
While the Supreme Court stated that it intends for the Carpenter decision to be interpreted narrowly, digital privacy experts have already hailed the Supreme Court’s decision as groundbreaking, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a statement that praised the decision as a “major victory” for privacy advocates.
New Precedent Expected in Decision Involving Online Advertising and E-Commerce
The next intellectual property case that the Supreme Court will decide is Ohio v. American Express. Experts expect that given the Supreme Court’s willingness to create new precedents to accommodate the new shifts in technology, the Supreme Court’s ruling will impact online advertising and e-commerce as the case focuses on credit card merchant fees.
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