In practice, there are several obstacles to the application of the substantive legal framework analysed in the previous chapters. First, there is a risk of contractual provisions that deviate from the legal norm. The qualification of certain rules as mandatory law may prevent such contractual deviation. Even so, effective recourse to the protective regimes throughout the course of the contract is not guaranteed. Reference may be made to the possibility for corporate partners to have recourse to trade secret protection and the apparent limited invocation of the protective legal framework. Collective enforcement may contribute to enhanced transparency throughout the music value chain and counter musicians’ fear of commercial retaliation. Further bolstering extra-judicial enforcement is likely to fulfil an important complementary role.

Generally, the political consensus at the beginning of the internet era was that platforms should have only limited liability under intellectual property law for content that users uploaded on these platforms.1 Now, however, the platforms are the center of gravity for the Internet, drawing in (for technical reasons and owing to network effects) all data streams in the respective ecosystems, for the benefit of the system leader controlling the platform. Furthermore, the contracts that system leaders conclude with business users, and which control their business relationship, not only normally grant the exclusive right to data generated on the platform to the platform provider but also generally neutralize any intellectual property rights held by the business user. Indeed, the system leaders are regulators of their respective ecosystems and use their system of contracts to control the ecosystems and exclude the use and importance of intellectual property rights. The platform or cloud provider contractually secures the right from the platform or cloud user, not only to store the data but also to analyze it and make use of it for the provider’s own benefit, and for the benefit of others in the ecosystem, on all connected markets. The platform providers thus become the masters of their respective data ecosystems; they do indeed hoard the data and generally do not trade or share the data.

This chapter describes how device makers try to leverage intellectual property (IP) rights to restrict repair and why those assertions are, as a general rule, inconsistent with a proper understanding of the law. IP—in the form of copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets—offers manufacturers an arsenal of weapons in the war on repair. From a practical perspective, IP law allows firms to credibly threaten to enjoin, silence, and ultimately bankrupt anyone with the audacity to repair a product without permission. That’s true despite the fact that IP claims against consumers and repair providers rest on questionable legal foundations.

This chapter explores the legal protection awarded to algorithms and argues that in the coming decade, with changes in coding methods, awarding IP protection for algorithms might not prevail. Even today, machines controlled by algorithms are outsmarting humans in many areas. For example, advanced algorithms influence markets and affect finance, commerce, human resources, health, and transportation.

Ignorance about chemical risks has been a signature feature of U.S. chemical regulation for nearly half a century. One of the primary reasons for this comes from our regulatory design, which fails to place responsibility on chemical manufacturers to understand and clearly communicate the risks of their chemical products. Instead, this burden is placed on time- and resource-strapped regulators and consumers. To make matters worse, manufacturers face substantial tort liabilities that further discourage them from rigorously assessing the risks of their chemical products, particularly if those assessments have a chance of revealing potential harms. The chapter closes with proposals for reform.

Consumer protection law is notoriously imbalanced with respect to the superior ability of sellers to process information as compared to their customers. Yet despite the resulting comprehension asymmetries, the design of consumer contract law and disclosure requirements regularly fail to encourage sellers to communicate meaningfully with the target audience. This chapter explores how consumer protection law tacitly encourages incomprehensibility and proposes reforms which would provide increased incentives for meaningful communication between buyers and sellers.