On 6/22/ 2023, Maurer School of Law S.J.D. candidates Zijin Yan, Simon Sun and Attamongkol Tantratian participated in the 2023 25th conference of the Law, Culture, and the Humanities. The conference was held at University of Toronto, Faculty of Law. The event consisted of professors and graduate students around the world to explore the theme of “ABSENCE, THE PRESENT AND THE PAST.”
The panel titled “Trade Secrets: How an Old System of Secrecy Embraces the New Technology” has been thoughtfully crafted by the three S.J.D. candidates. This panel delves into the realm of trade secret protection, examining it through the lenses of copyright fair use, algorithmic transparency, and consumer inferences. Serving as the panel chair, Zijin Yan presented “Fair Use as a Solution To The Midlife Crisis of Trade Secret Protection” with a specific proposal to allow fair use for certain secondary uses of semi-public data in order to strike a balance and prevent excessive trade secret protection in certain cases; Simon Sun and Zijin Yan presented “An Economic Analysis of the Chinese Algorithmic Protection: The Conflict between Trade Secrets and Transparency Disclosure,” where they explore the impact of transparency requirements on the cost of safeguarding trade secrets for businesses, considering the increasing number of regulatory initiatives focusing on AI; Attamongkol Tantratian presented “Discussing Trade Secrecy: When Companies Own Your Secrets, Are They Still Secret?,” in which he challenges the claim often made by companies that the inferences they generate about consumers are their trade secrets, thereby giving them the right to reject consumers’ access requests to the inferences.
The panel took place in a virtual setting, with the three candidates presenting from various corners of the world: Zijin Yan joined from Vietnam during an internship with Tilleke&Gibbins, Simon Sun from Bloomington, Indiana, and Attamongkol Tantratian from Providence, Rhode Island. This remarkable geographical dispersion highlights the interconnectedness of the Maurer community, where students engage in intellectual exploration regardless of their physical locations.
After-session photo by Kathy Kim 😀
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