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There is a long-existing circuit split among federal courts of appeals as to whether an individual has standing under Article III of the United States Constitution when their personally identifying information (PII) is stolen from an entity to which they entrusted it such as a hospital or bank. Federal courts disagree as to whether an individual whose PII has been stolen--without more--has suffered an injury-in-fact, a necessary element of standing. The disagreement between the courts centers on whether the injury-in-fact has already occurred at the time the PII is stolen or whether the injury occurs once the PII has been used for some harmful purpose, such as identity theft or fraud. Essentially, the question is whether the injury alleged is speculative. This Note advances the theory of bailment as a solution to whether the injury-in-fact has occurred. Under this approach, customers who give their PII to an entity will be treated as bailors and the entities will be treated as bailees. This approach would effectively redefine the injury to be treated as a breach of bailment. This solution is best achieved through Congressional action pursuant to its interstate commerce powers. Through legislative action, a comprehensive scheme may be put into place that not only creates bailments, but also provides for statutory damages. Statutory damages will account for lack of evidence of economic harm and the willfulness of the bailee's conduct. As data breaches continue to increase in frequency, the need for a solution becomes more and more urgent. Through the solution advocated for in this Note, victims of data breaches will be compensated and the costs of mitigating harm will be shifted appropriately to the party most able to prevent it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cryptocurrency exchanges play a key role in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, serving not only as central marketplaces for buyers and sellers to trade but also as custodians for their customers' cryptocurrency holdings. Exchanges, however, are thinly regulated for safety and soundness and face major insolvency risks from their own proprietary investments as well as hacking. This piece considers what would happen to customers' custodial holdings if a cryptocurrency exchange in the United States were to fail. Any custodial relationship can potentially be characterized as a debtor-creditor relationship between the custodian and customer, rather than an entrustment or bailment of property. U.S. law gives substantial protection to the custodial holdings of securities, commodities. or cash deposits by securities, commodities brokers, or banks. No such regime exists. however, for custodial holdings of cryptocurrencies. Instead, bankruptcy courts might well deem the custodial holdings to be property of the bankrupt exchange, rather than of its customers. If so, the exchange could use or sell the cryptocurrency, and the customers would merely be general unsecured creditors of the exchange, entitled only to a pro ram distribution oj the exchange's residual assets after any secured or priority creditors had been repaid. And even if the holdings were ultimately deemed property of the customers, the customers would still experience extended disruption to their access to their holdings. Cryptocurrencies are designed to address a problem of transactional credit risk-the possibility of "double-spending." The lesson here is that credit risk can arise not just from active transacting in cryptocurrency but also from passive holding of cryptocurrency. Because this passive holding risk turns on technical details of bankruptcy and commercial law, it is unlikely to be understood, much less priced, by most market participants. The result is a moral hazard in which exchanges are incentivized to engage in even riskier behavior because they capture all of the rewards while the costs are externalized on their customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, Fourth Amendment protections have turned on "reasonable expectations of privacy." But a new era may be dawning. There is growing interest among judges and scholars in turning away from privacy toward property or positive lawas the touchstone for Fourth Amendment protections. Yet many questions remain about how that approach should work, such as where judges should look for positive law and precisely what role positive law should play in Fourth Amendment analysis. This Article answers those questions, and in so doing lays forth a new, comprehensive theory of the Fourth Amendment. We argue that courts should interpret the Fourth Amendment's protections by looking to "general law"--the common law under the control of no particular sovereign. Courts looking to general law would draw on ancient property concepts such as trespass, license, and bailments in determining the scope of protections. But they would also draw on custom, social practices, and modern legal developments to identify and flesh out common-law rules unknown at the Founding. The general-lawapproach has numerous advantages over competitor theories. It makes better sense of the Fourth Amendment's text and has deeper roots in its history. It is surprisingly easy to reconcile with a great deal of Fourth Amendment doctrine, while also suggesting important refinements in various areas. And it gives courts the flexibility to protect Fourth Amendment values in a changing world while also structuring and guiding the judicial task more than an untethered inquiry into privacy expectations. Private law, then, holds the key to understanding the Fourth Amendment's limits on public power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses court cases relating to the revised Article 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) in the U.S. Some of these cases include Kloeckner Metals Corp. v. Five Rivers Distribution LLC which focused on a bailment agreement, Great Gulf Corp. v. Graham which highlighted a purported transfer of a section 7-209 warehouse lien on a stored airplane, and Dolan Mechanical Inc. v. Thackray Crane Rental Inc. which focused on allegations of damage by the bailor.

The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon's servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care and may be liable if they fail to return the property. The parties can use contracts to customize the relationship but not to disclaim the duty of care entirely. Tracing the law of bailment relationships from its ancient roots to the present, this Article argues that cloud storage should be understood as potentially creating a bailment relationship. Though the kind of stored property has changed over time, the parties' expectations and incentives have not: people entrusting their property to others expect that it will be kept reasonably safe. Although cloud storage is not new, courts have had scant opportunity to analyze the obligations of cloud storage providers. The best explanation for this lack of case law is the decline of litigation, the rise of arbitration, federal diversity jurisdiction, and the ever-growing dominance of contracts, not that bailment has no role in cloud storage. Recognizing cloud storage as a potential bailment would have significant implications. Most immediately, it would suggest that some provisions in many cloud storage services' contracts are unenforceable or enforceable only after fact-intensive judicial review. A handcollected dataset of fifty-eight cloud storage contracts reveals that most have included general disclaimers for any liability for lost data that are inconsistent with the duty of care that is the foundation of the law of bailment. In addition, understanding cloud storage as a bailment would have important implications for both the law of consumer protection and Fourth Amendment protections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the impact of patent bibliographic indicators and patent characteristics on the economic value of patents put on sale in an auction, considering different typologies of sellers and buyers, A unique data set covering all patent auctions held until the end of 2008 by Ocean Tomo is used. We employ two measures of patent value drawn from the auction process: the offer price (ex ante value set by the seller) and the closing price (the market value determined by the buyers) of patent lots. We find a positive correlation between forward citations and the economic value of patents (in terms of both the lot offer price and the lot closing price), while backward citations have a positive and significant impact only on the lot offer price. The number of claims is positively related to the lot closing price and the effect is significant only for the fraction of buyers who are nonpracticing entities. The degree of technological congruence of the patents included in a lot turns out to be positively associated with the probability that the lot is sold and has a positive effect on both the lot offer price and the lot closing price. We also find a significant impact of the extent of the residual life of patents on the lot closing price. The effect is driven by the subsample of nonpracticing entities as buyers. Finally, the extension of patent protection to other jurisdictions, as captured by the size of the patent family, is positively associated with both the lot offer price and the lot closing price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a survey on the amended Article Seven of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) in the U.S. covering documents of title and bailments. Other topics include enforcement of warehouse liens, limitation of liability, and the judgments in several cases like 'Fujifilm North America Corp. v. D/C Export & Domestic Packing, Inc.,' and 'Embassy Apparel, Inc. v. Pixior, LLC.'

The article suggests a baseline standard of care that should be owed by a receiving party in discovery to protect the electronic data of the producing party. Topics discussed include the U.S. the Supreme Court's holding in case "Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart;" the ownership rights over data do not transfer to the receiving party in discovery; and bailment liability to electronic information in data security breach cases.

The article characterizes high and low value patents based on the non‐linearity of the age‐value relationship, as an attempt to provide some statistical understanding on the difference in the value of patent characteristics over time. A set of 138 US singleton patents, mainly from the computers and communication field, successfully auctioned by an US auction firm called OceanTomo during 2006–2008 forms the data. Analysis shows evidence of non‐linearity in the patent age‐value relationship and the sensitivity of patent characteristics to temporal dimension in explaining value of patented knowledge. The U‐shaped temporal value of knowledge, identifying older patented knowledge as more valuable, thus, finds support. Furthermore, patents sold in their first half exhibit more lag, less patent scope and less forward citations. Patents sold by firms dominate the younger patent, while the older patent cohort finds more patents sold by individuals. These and other results are discussed for their significance for patent sale. We acknowledge the limitations of a small sample size. Nevertheless, the article provides statistical understanding on the potential characteristics of high and low value patents, explored through the non‐linear age value dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the repercussions brought by the ratio decidendi of the Res Cogitans in the realm of international sales of bunkers under English law. It considers the judicial findings from the conflicts of law perspective and argues that under the relevant lex rei sitae the result should be different. The intermediate seller could not claim for the price of bunkers neither on contract nor in bailment, because he did not confer a direct benefit (ownership in the fuel) to the shipowner. On the other hand, the latter obtained title from the physical supplier based on possession at the moment of delivery to the ship. This title should be opposable to any third party, including the intermediate provider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the weaknesses of animal safe haven programs for pets that were affected by family violence in their owners' household along with solutions to manage such problems. Topics include the connection between animal and human violence, the legal conception of animals or pets, and factors that contribute to the development of tension in animal safe havens such as bailment.

We investigate the effect of limiting the number of reserve prices on the revenue in a probabilistic single item auction. In the model considered, bidders compete for an impression drawn from a known distribution of possible types. The auction mechanism sets up to $$\ell $$ reserve prices, and each impression type is assigned the highest reserve price lower than the valuation of some bidder for it. The bidder proposing the highest bid for an arriving impression gets it provided his bid is at least the corresponding reserve price, and pays the maximum between the reserve price and the second highest bid. Since the number of impression types may be huge, we consider the revenue $$R_{\ell }$$ that can be ensured using only $$\ell $$ reserve prices. Our main results are tight lower bounds on $$R_{\ell }$$ for the cases where the impressions are drawn from the uniform or a general probability distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the impact of private information in sealed-bid first-price auctions. For a given symmetric and arbitrarily correlated prior distribution over values, we characterize the lowest winning-bid distribution that can arise across all information structures and equilibria. The information and equilibrium attaining this minimum leave bidders indifferent between their equilibrium bids and all higher bids. Our results provide lower bounds for bids and revenue with asymmetric distributions over values. We also report further characterizations of revenue and bidder surplus including upper bounds on revenue. Our work has implications for the identification of value distributions from data on winning bids and for the informationally robust comparison of alternative auction mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that forty-nine U.S. states and the District of Columbia have adopted the 2003 revisions of Article 7 of Uniform Commercial Code. It discusses the decision of a district court in the case "Global Strategies, Inc. v. Harbor Freight Transport Corp" concerning bailment and negligence.

The flash crash experienced by U.S. markets in May 2010 provided stark evidence that a large trade can have a powerful influence. We explore the impact of an unusual trade on behavior in experimental bubbles markets. We chose the experimental design proposed by Smith, Suchanek, and Williams (1988) because replication shows it produces markets prone to mispricing. After several rounds of trading, our markets receive a large quantity order at an extreme price. In a standard double auction bubble market, pricing is unaffected by an abnormal order. However, with increased uncertainty about the underlying economic value of the asset, over-pricing weakens on arrival of a negative price shock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artist and writer Bob Fingerman is the creator of the comic book seriesMinimum Wageand the critically acclaimed graphic novelsWhite Like She, Beg the QuestionandFrom the Ashes. He is also the author of two prose novels,Bottomfeeder(2006) andPariah(2010). In this interview he discusses the evolution and publication history ofMinimum Wagewithin the context of his work and career to date. Additional topics explored within the interview include his art and writing process; how European comics have historically differed from North American comics in terms of approach and aesthetic principles; comic strip art; the art and influence ofHeavy Metalmagazine, Moebius (Jean Giraud), Richard Corben, and Gahan Wilson; and prioritising creator-owned work over work-for-hire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This Article analyzes the legal and historical development of banks' power to loan deposits, a power that forms the foundation of fractional-reserve banking. The ability to loan deposits derives from their legal classification as debts. This categorization differs from that of other fungible-good deposits, which are considered bailments. To explain the law's treatment of bank deposits, this Article looks to historical and legal trends that date back to sixteenth-century England and follows those trends through nineteenth-century American jurisprudence. Ultimately, the Article concludes that the courts correctly classified deposits as debts, but erred in failing to require banks to disclose to depositors that they were not, in fact, holding their deposits in safekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If fractional-reserve demand deposits are common, and illegitimate, an obvious flaw in the banking system is exposed. However, this article maintains that the only reason why demand deposits may be considered illegitimate is because of a way of defining them that renders them almost irrelevant. This article provides a response to Bagus et al. (J Bus Ethics, Forthcoming, ), and identifies examples of how they misrepresent Evans (J Bus Ethics, Forthcoming, ). It also provides further considerations on the tradeoffs relating to the availability of a deposit; methodological subjectivism; and the potential for hybrid contracts. Deposit and loan contracts may be hard to mix, but the actual results of doing so should not be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-round combinatorial auctions have been infrequently employed for essentially two reasons, the computational complexity of the Winner Determination Problem, and the need to provide information feedback to bidders to enable them to bid meaningfully. Here we take a fresh look at the second issue. In business environments, a bidder's valuation of a package can change in response to signals from other bidders. In the absence of feedback, bidders are forced to expend time and resources to determine these package valuations as accurately as possible. We propose a multi-round combinatorial auction scheme with inter-round feedback called RevalSlot that helps a bidder to converge to an appropriate valuation for a package. This is likely to prove attractive to bidders and thereby increase bidder participation. We also propose a simplified version of the scheme called RevalBundle that requires fewer solutions of the Winner Determination Problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the recent debate over the legitimacy of maturity mismatching and fractional reserve banking. It shows that there is common ground between Bagus and Howden (Journal of Business Ethics, 90(3):399-406, , 106:295-300, ) on the one hand and Evans (Journal of Business Ethics, ) on the other regarding contractual arrangements that lead to fractional reserve banking, while both agree that fractional reserve banking that arises out of a bailment or storage contract constitutes fraud. Block and Barnett (Journal of Business Ethics, 88(4):711-716, , 100:229-238, ) stress the illegitimacy of fractional reserve banking for creating more money substitutes than there is actual money. While it is true that fractional reserve banks are capable of creating money, this activity still cannot be regarded as fraudulent using a common law definition of fraud for it can only take place with requisite client collaboration that makes it impossible to identify a victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In reverse auctions, buyers often retain the right to bargain further concessions from the winners. The optimal form of such procurement is an English auction followed by an auctioneer's option to engage in ultimatum bargaining with the winners. We study behavior and performance in this procurement format using a laboratory experiment. Sellers closely follow the equilibrium strategy of exiting the auction at their costs and then accepting strictly profitable offers. Buyers generally exercise their option to bargain according to their equilibrium strategy, but their take-it-or-leave-it offers vary positively with auction prices when they should be invariant. We explain this deviation by modeling buyers' subjective posteriors regarding the winners' costs as distortions of the Bayesian posteriors, calculated using a formulation similar to a commonly used probability weighting function. We further test the robustness of the experimental results and the subjective posterior explanation with three additional experimental treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study cardinal auctions for selling multiple copies of a good, in which bidders specify not only their bid or how much they are ready to pay for the good, but also a cardinality constraint on the number of copies that will be sold via the auction. We perform first known Price of Anarchy type analyses with detailed comparison of the classical Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auction and one based on minimum pay property (MPP) which is similar to Generalized Second Price auction commonly used in sponsored search. Without cardinality constraints, MPP has the same efficiency (total value to bidders) and at least as much revenue (total income to the auctioneer) as VCG; this also holds for certain other generalizations of MPP (e.g., prefix constrained auctions, as we show here). In contrast, our main results are that, with cardinality constraints, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We study in the laboratory a series of first price sealed bid auctions of a common value good. Bidders face three types of information: private information, public information and common uncertainty. Auctions are characterized by the relative size of these three information elements. Only half of our subjects bid differently depending on whether the last piece of information obtained is private or public but they do not react to each type of information as predicted by theory. The other half of the subjects do not distinguish between private and public information and either consistently underbid or consistently overbid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Australian court case In re Arcabi Pty Ltd., which dealt with bailments and consignments under the Commonwealth Personal Property Securities Act of 2009. Topics include the treatment of bailments and consignment as a security interest and the registration of security interests on the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR).

The article discusses the Supreme Court of Victoria case Rolfe v. Investec Bank (Australia) Ltd. which deals with the responsibilities of the bailee. An overview of the case, which involves the issue on the claim of bailment by James Rolef Transport (Vic) Pty Ltd. owner against Investec Bank, is given. Considerations of the case are explored, including the onus proof on the bailee and case of action for damages.

The article looks at the role of bailment in cultural property claims. Topics discussed include the impact of a particular legal relationship on influence on claims and transactions concerning cultural objects, concept of unilateral bailment as a significant foundation for the development of claims, and the numerous conundra that may rise from the bailment concept. Modern origins and qualities of bailment are noted.

In a multi-stage contest known as a two-player race, players display two fundamental behaviors: (1) the laggard will make a last stand in order to avoid the cost of losing; and (2) the player who is ahead will defend his lead if it is threatened. Last stand behavior, in particular, contrasts with previous research where the underdog simply gives up. The distinctive results are achieved by introducing losing penalties and discounting into the racing environment. This framework permits the momentum effect, typically ascribed to the winner of early stages, to be more thoroughly examined. I study the likelihood that the underdog will catch up. I find that neck-and-neck races are common when the losing penalty is large relative to the winning prize, while landslide victories occur when the prize is relatively large. Closed-form solutions are given for the case where players have a common winning prize and losing penalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines price expectation adjustment of house buyers and sellers to rapid changes in the housing market using data from Scotland where houses are sold through ‘first-price sealed-bid’ auctions. These auctions provide more information on market signals, incentives and the behaviour of market participants than private treaty sales. This paper therefore provides a theoretical framework for analysing revealed preference data generated from these auctions. We specifically focus on the analysis of the selling to asking price difference, the ‘bid-premium’. The bid-premium is shown to be affected by expectations of future price movements, market duration and high bidding frequency. The bid-premium reflects consumer's expectations, adapting to market conditions more promptly than asking price setting behaviour and final sale prices. The volatile conditions of the recent housing market bubble are fully reflected in the bid-premium, whereas the asking and sale prices are much less prone to rapid movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Budget-related decisions in sponsored search auctions are recognized as a structured decision problem rather than a simple constraint. Budget planning over several coupled campaigns (e.g., substitution and complementarity) remains a challenging but important task for advertisers. In this paper, we propose a dynamic multicampaign budget planning approach using optimal control techniques, with consideration of the substitution relationship between advertising campaigns. A three-dimensional measure of substitution relationships between campaigns is presented, namely, the overlapping degree in terms of campaign contents, promotional periods, and target regions. We also study some desirable properties and possible solutions to our budget model. Computational simulations and experiments are conducted to evaluate our model using real-world data from practical campaigns in sponsored search auctions. Experimental results show that (1) our approach outperforms the baseline strategy that is commonly used in practice; (2) coupled campaigns with a higher overlapping degree in between reduce the optimal total budget level, then reduce the optimal payoff, and reach the budgeting cap earlier than those with a less overlapping degree; and (3) the advertising effort can be seriously weakened by ignoring the degree of overlapping between campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The approach of the courts when considering proprietary ('ownership') interests in human bodily material has been pragmatic and piecemeal. The general principle was initially that such material is not legally 'property' that can be 'owned', but courts have recognised many exceptions. In determining disputes between individuals in particular cases, they have stated principles that are often inconsistent with those stated in other cases with different facts. Later judges have been constrained by these decisions, especially when made at appellate level. They can distinguish the facts of one case from another to achieve a different outcome, but they cannot state new principles to be applied more widely to promote consistency. This requires the will of Parliament and legislation to introduce new principles. Experience to date suggests that such legislation will need to be wide-ranging and complex, with different principles for different circumstances. There will not be one area of law that answers all the issues that arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including bailments, the legal framework governing human tissue donation, and property law.