Posted by Vicki Elter.

Experts in security and legal matters claim that if Apple has to create a software tool to help agents hack into an iPhone, many people will likely misuse it. In order to use Apple’s information in court, there will need to be numerous tests and work done by forensic experts. This will create more opportunities for leaks. Although the Justice Department explained that it just wants a tool that can just be used on the San Bernardino phone, hackers and other companies could potentially have access to the Apple’s methods.

There are over 200 other cases that are interested in using Apple’s tool to unlock iPhones. Additionally, other arguments against Apple releasing this tool explain that it could encourage hackers to conduct a reverse engineering. Although the software for the tool would be destroyed after its work is done, government employees could make Apple create it again.

Apple explains that the software would need a huge amount of testing before it is used. To finish the testing, Apple would need to send it to outside experts, which would increase the chance of the tool being stolen. Additionally, defense experts would demand scrutiny of the tool.

Vicki is an accounting and management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Justin Cohen.

Martin Shkreli a pharmaceutical CEO raised the price of an AIDS drug that saves people’s lives. In December of 2015, the prices of the drug, called Daraprim, was raised by five thousand percent, one bottle originally being $13.50 to $750.

The ethical problem in this situation was by making the drug so expensive that only a select few could afford it, hurts the people the company is allegedly trying to help. The company made this drug not only to make a profit, but also to help patients with AIDS. Shkreli states “Because the drug was unprofitable at the former price, so any company selling it would be losing money. And at this price it’s a reasonable profit. Not excessive at all” –Shkreli.

This drug has been selling for sixty-two years. I think the new price of this drug is very excessive. The company has been living off the past profit for years. The price could have been raised, but 5,000 percent is very excessive.

Companies making drugs to help save lives should be more worried about the people they are serving than making the most profit they can. This brings up the ethical questions, was making money more important to Shkreli than saving lives? What did he think was going to happen to the patients who now could not afford the drug? Why did Shkreli put himself before thousands of other people? Lastly, what are the ethical obligations of a company to aid the public vs. making a profit?

Justin is a sports management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2018.

Posted by Justin Cohen.

For years now, daily fantasy sports has been slowly growing but recently, it has been huge. Over the last two years, if you have watched a single sporting event, I cannot imagine you not seeing one of their ads. “Fanduel packs the thrill of a whole season into just one week” (Fanduel). They are everywhere.

According to Wired, DraftKings or Fanduel aired an ad on television every 90 seconds. “You only need to remind people of something that often if your target market is sports loving goldfish” (John Oliver). Daily fantasy sports combines everything guys love, sports and money. Although the multi-billion dollar industry is made up of thousands of companies, the two main sites, DraftKings and Fanduel are the main ones making significant profit. They were recently under investigation for being unfair and there were reports of people within the sites going in and changing their entries so they would be able to win every time.

Just the other day however, attorney general Schneiderman stated, “As I’ve said from the start, my job is to enforce the law, and starting today, DraftKings and FanDuel will abide by it.” So now, in New York and some other areas, people will not be able to play daily fantasy sports. Is this fair? Isn’t there more important things that he should be worrying about? These are questions I ask myself. Although fantasy sports used to be a game where you played with your coworkers and eventually lost to Janice in accounting, I like the path fantasy sports is headed with more interaction and more overall fun than just regular old fantasy sports.

I believe fantasy sport sites should be legal, but if it goes down that path, they need to declare themselves as a gambling site. In all interviews and ads regarding what the site is, they state it is an entertainment site, not a gambling site, which is why the general can make it illegal in New York. For the future, I can see this going two ways. In one scenario, I can see daily fantasy sports making a comeback, and becoming legal again. In the other scenario, the more likely scenario in my opinion, I can see it becoming illegal everywhere, which I am not looking forward to.

Justin is a sports management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2018.

Posted by Kyle Beck.

A company who makes sleep apnea masks has “agreed to pay $34.8 million to settle claims” that say the company paid kickbacks to suppliers that sold its products. Philips Resprionics, Inc. offered free customer support through its medSage call center, while the company’s competitors had to pay for a call center. This act made it more likely that a company would buy from Philips Resprionics Inc, and because the masks can be covered by Medicare or Medicaid programs; this is considered a kickback. Benjamin Mizer of the Justice Department said, “Kickbacks ‘in any form to induce patient referrals threatens public confidence in the health care system.”

Suppliers who bought masks from Phillips Resprionics, Inc. saved “$11.88 per year for each patient that used a Respironics mask. A supplier that had 10,000 patient customers would save $118,800 annually.” The money received from the lawsuit will be divided between 3 groups. The whistleblower Dr. Gibran Ameer will receive $5.4 million, the federal government will receive$28.7 million, and state Medicaid programs will receive $660,000.

This is a good step towards fairness, because it makes sure that no one is taking advantage for people who have medical problems.

Kyle is an economics major in the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2018.

Posted by Michael Villafana.

You may notice a new safety measure when attending a Major League Baseball game this summer. Extra safety nets will be added to several Major League ballparks starting during the 2016 season, due to several class action lawsuits filed by many baseball fans. Most recently, Gail Payne filed a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball seeking to get the league to act on installing better protection for fans. She also filed an amendment claiming the injuries she suffered when she was struck by a foul ball. According to the lawsuit, it states that around 90 fans have been injured since the initial lawsuit was filed. Two other fans joined Payne’s lawsuit, with one claiming that she sustained broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung when being struck by a foul ball.

In the lawsuit, all 32 teams are named as defendants. However, Major League teams have denied any liabilities for injuries, as they clearly have printed on their tickets liability waivers in which you “sign” to when you purchase your tickets. The MLB has recommended to all 30 teams to extend their foul ball safety nets beyond the end of the dugouts. In addition, the MLB has recommended that they educate their fans better on fan safety and ways to prevent injuries. However, the law firm that filed the class-action lawsuit for Mrs. Payne believes the safety upgrades must be required, and not just recommended.

The MLB has done its due diligence of research on this concerning trend. During their Fall League exhibition games, they studied the direction of foul balls, if a fan was hit or in danger, and the exit velocity off the bat to see how fast the ball was coming at a fan. The latter is what concerns Major League Baseball, which is the most occurrences, with more and more pitchers throwing in the high 90s, leading to faster exit velocity off the bats of batters.

Though some fans may oppose this safety precaution because it ruins the experience of the game, Major League teams are closely exploring the option of adding extra netting. Most notably, the Minnesota Twins were the first team to add extra netting extending beyond the end of the dugouts.

Look for more teams to follow the Twins’ lead so they don’t face any class-action lawsuits by their fans.

Michael is a sports management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Ashley Hellmers.

The New York Times published an article reporting that the Supreme Court has decided to hear Samsung’s appeal over how must be compensated for the replication of Apple’s designs.  Samsung violated Apple’s design patents for the iPhone in the creation of their S7 smartphones. Design patents are created to protect how a product looks, while a utility patent is created to protect how a product operates. Utility patents are much more common than design patents especially in this technological age. This case is monumental because the Supreme Court has not heard a case surrounding design patents in the last hundred years. The key question the Supreme Court will determine is “Where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, should an award of infringer’s profits be limited to those profits attributable to the component?”

Originally, Apple was to be awarded $548 million dollars by Samsung’s due to their infringement on Apple’s design patents. Three elements were declared to have been replicated from Apple’s iPhone: “a particular black rectangular round-cornered front face”; “a substantially similar rectangular round-cornered front face plus the surrounding rim”; and “a particular colorful grid of sixteen icons.” If a design patent is infringed upon, all profits made by the infringing company for the product are to be granted to the patent’s owner. According to the article, “even if the patented features contributed to 1 percent of the value of Samsung’s phone, Apple gets 100 percent of Samsung’s profits.”

Samsung is appealing to the Supreme Court because they believe design patents and this profit rule should not be applicable in this technological era. Many companies, such as Google and Facebook, are speaking out on the side of Samsung that the design patents are out of touch with the digital era. In terms of technology, a products function is more important and more profitable than its design. Therefore, Samsung believes that the profit rule associated with design patents is outdated. Samsung is seeking to pay only $149 million to Apple after the appeal. Apple was pushing for the Supreme Court not to hear the case.

Ashley is a marketing major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Michael Villafana.

Ten years ago from this June, the life of Koua Fong Lee changed forever, as well as those who were in the car who Lee crashed into. Koua Fong Lee was entering onto an entrance ramp in his home state of Minnesota, when all of a sudden his Toyota Camry sped up, instead of slowing down at the upcoming stoplight. His Camry crashed into the back of another car, killing two instantly including a 9-year-old child, and a 7-year-child later in the hospital. Lee was charged with criminal vehicular homicide in a Minnesota court where he testified that he attempted to break but his car would not slow down. Toyota, on the other hand, testified that Lee indeed tried to break, but he was actually stepping on the gas pedal instead of the break. Lee was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison.

In 2009, Toyota issued a recall on some of its models over acceleration issues. This prompted Lee’s legal team to revisit the case. However, it was not Lee’s team that filed a lawsuit against Toyota. It was the passengers in the car that was hit from behind by Lee. Lee joined the lawsuit claiming that his 1996 Camry inexplicably accelerated. Toyota had already settled several lawsuits over this issue, but the Lee case was one of their biggest to date.

The lawsuit went to court, where jurors heard expert testimony from both sides. Lee’s attorney used the help of an automobile expert John Stilson to help prove that every time Lee stepped on the gas, the speed would increase and would stick at that speed. Ultimately, the expert testimony given by Stilson and others led Lee’s team to a court victory. The jury ruled in favor of Lee’s team resulting in a huge compensatory pay for the victims. Toyota was ordered to pay $10.9 million in damages, being split between the victims of the crash and the Lee family. Koua Fong Lee was released from prison in 2010, after wrongly being placed there. After being released from prison, Lee stated “My life and my family is not the same anymore. So they [Toyota] are responsible for that.”

Michael is a sports management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Kyle Beck.

When someone is looking for an easy target to steal money from, they do not usually decide pick the US military. That is not the case for Alex Wisidagama, the global manager of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, who overbilled the maritime branch of the US military by more than $34 million. He, along with his cousin Leonard Glenn Francis who is the top executive of GDMA, and ten other naval officers have been charged in the case and “all but one has pleaded guilty.” Wisidagama has been sentenced to five years while his lawyer argues that he should only be given thirty months.

The naval officers pleaded guilty to bribery and “diverting ships to Asian ports where the company owned the port or the port had lax oversight, allowing GDMA to inflate prices.”

While GSMA has done business with US naval ships in Asia for 25 years, investigators are still looking into how long the maritime branch has been getting overcharged. Investigators are currently focused on Francis, because he admitted to providing “an exhaustive list of gifts, including payments for prostitutes, concert tickets and luxury hotel stays for Naval officers in exchange for classified information that helped his company carry out the scheme.” This comes as a huge problem for Wisidagama because, according to his lawyer, no one in Wisidagama’s position after this case would be able to pay off the charges, because he is not allowed to ever work on government contracts.

Kyle is an economics major in the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2018.

Posted by Kyle Chapman.

Hillary Clinton was accused of using a personal email account out of her home for her official email communication while she was Secretary of State. She used her family’s private email server, instead of using the official State Department email account maintained on federal government servers. Government officials argue that the use of a private server, private messaging system software, and deleting almost 32,000 emails has violated State Department procedures and federal laws of recordkeeping requirements. Some of these emails are deemed to be “Top Secret” and confidential information. In my opinion, this is a violation of federal law.

After a CNN interview, a new opportunity has shown some light for Hillary. Hillary stated, “Everything I did was permitted. There was no law. There was no regulation.” To clarify, the legal requirement to immediately preserve emails from a nongovernment email account was not put into law until two years after she stepped down as Secretary of State. She claims that she has done nothing wrong because there was no law enforced when she committed the act. Hillary stated that other Secretaries of State did the same thing, but there are no records of other secretaries setting up a private email server for all of their government communications. In addition, while Hillary was Secretary of State, she sent a cable containing her signature warning employees to avoid handling official business from a personal email account.

Therefore, Hillary was well informed of her actions. Even though there was not a specific law enforcing to preserve emails from nongovernment accounts, Clinton knew what she was doing. In that case, I find Hillary guilty for her actions.

This whole controversy started when officials were unable to locate emails in the investigation of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. It looks like as if she was covering her tracks by deleting those emails on her private server. Not only did this interfere with the investigation, but a hacker attempted to hack into her email server.

Mishandling top secret government information is a federal crime. In conclusion, I find Hillary guilty for the use of mishandling government information by using her own private email server.

Kyle is a management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Brooke Sabol.

Gucci America, Inc. sought default judgement, an award of statutory damages, costs of the suit and a permanent injunction against defendant Wang Huoqing. The hearing on the motion was on October 8, 2010. Gucci became aware that Wang was selling fake products bearing the Gucci name and trademark on the internet to U.S residents. Gucci ended up suing Wang. The court needed to decide if Gucci had jurisdiction over Wang before it could enter default judgement.

The court granted default judgement against defendant Wang on false designation. The court awarded statutory damages to Gucci America, Bottega Veneta International S.A.R.L, Balenciaga S.A. Gucci America was awarded $440,000, Bottega Veneta International S.A.R.L was awarded $4,000, and lastly Balenciaga S.A. was awarded $8,000. For prejudgment interest Gucci was awarded $12,768.92, Bottega Venteta was awarded $116.08, and Balenciaga S.A $232.16. Lastly they were each awarded $233.33 on the basis of defendant’s trademark infringement.

In my opinion, I believe the default judgment order was fair. Wang was at fault by illegally copyrighting Gucci’s trademark.

Brooke Sabol is a marketing major at Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.