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CLIP has successfully institutionalized a research program that offers opportunities for students and post-graduate fellows to engage in scholarly and policy-focused publishable work in close collaboration with faculty and CLIP staff.

Ongoing Research Projects

Cloud Computing & Student Privacy in Primary & Secondary Schools

CLIP has initiated a project to analyze how public primary and secondary schools address student privacy obligations under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”) and, where applicable, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in their adoption of cloud computing services. This project will identify a meaningful and representative sample of school districts and analyze those districts’ cloud service contracts, district policies with respect to teachers’ use of third party services, and parental notification documents. CLIP will produce a report that provides an assessment of the general levels of compliance with the applicable laws and, based on the analytic findings, make policy recommendations with respect to the sufficiency of student privacy protections and cloud services for primary and secondary school settings. Work on this project is supported by a gift from Microsoft.

Privacy and Missing Persons in Natural Disasters

In April 2013, Fordham Law's Center on Law and Information Policy (CLIP) and the Commons Lab of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars issued a report titled “Privacy and Missing Persons after Natural Disasters,” prepared as part of a joint project. The project is part of an international effort led by the Missing Persons Community of Interest (MPCI) that is unifying a wide array of databases and technologies to enhance searches for missing persons following natural disasters.  MPCI, which emerged in response to the 2010 Haitian earthquake, includes participants from local disaster management, international humanitarian relief organizations, private sector technology companies, nonprofits, and digital volunteer communities.

The report offers a roadmap to the legal and policy issues surrounding privacy and missing persons following natural disasters. It provides strategies that humanitarian organizations, private sector organizations, volunteers, and policymakers can pursue to help those affected by major natural disasters. For example, the report recommends that the United States government exercise existing legal authority to support appropriate sharing of personal information about missing persons following natural disasters. More broadly, the report recommends that those developing technologies to share information about missing persons implement design principles that carefully balance privacy consistent with existing legal obligations. The report also calls on privacy policymakers, legislators, and regulators to take steps to clarify how privacy rules apply to missing persons activities in identified key areas so that missing persons activities can proceed without the threat of legal liability.

The CLIP project team consisted of Professor Joel R. Reidenberg, Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair in Law and Academic Director of CLIP, Robert Gellman, a privacy and information policy consultant who previously served as chief counsel to the U.S. House of Representative Government Operations Committee and served as a member of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, Jamela Debelak, Fordham CLIP’s former executive director, and two student researchers, Adam Elewa and Nancy Liu.

The project was supported by the Wilson Center and a gift made by Fordham University alumnus and trustee Ed Stroz and his digital risk management company, Stroz Friedberg.

A copy of the report is available for download at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2229610

Smartphone Patents

In June 2012, CLIP was awarded a research grant by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to research and report on the acquisition and use of patents in the smartphone industry.  This new study is a follow-up to one of the recommendations made in the Report on an Analysis of the Economic/Legal Literature on Intellectual Property Rights (IP): A Barrier to Entry?, which CLIP previously prepared for WIPO.  The objective of this new research is both to obtain and analyze data that can provide insight on the openness of the smartphone market and to report on the impact that the ownership and enforcement of patents are having on the accessibility of the market.  The CLIP research team is led by Professor Reidenberg and CLIP Executive Director Jamela Debelak. They are assisted by Daniel Gross, a post-graduate Fellow from the Fordham Law class of 2011, and Fordham Law student Elaine Mindrup '14.

Internet Jurisdiction

CLIP has initiated a research project focused on Internet jurisdiction.  This project will provide a survey of the case law and legal literature analyzing jurisdiction for claims arising out of Internet activity.  CLIP will produce a report that will discuss the major cases and legal scholarship addressing Internet jurisdiction in the United States and a few pre-selected foreign jurisdictions. The goal of the report is to identify the trends in the legal literature. The study will be a comprehensive, objective resource designed to assist scholars and policy-makers in their search for materials addressing the issues of jurisdiction on the Internet. The CLIP research team for the study is led by Professor Reidenberg and Jamela Debelak, who are assisted by Fordham Dean’s Fellow, Megan Bright ('12), Fordham LLM Student Cameron Russell and Fordham Law students, Daniela Alvarado ('13), Emily Seiderman (’14) and Andrew Rosen ('13).  The work on this project is supported by a gift from Google, Inc..