Weekly Roundup: Genius Acts and Killer Data
Plus a brief update on some personal research
Today’s Weekly Roundup is a little different, as I am preparing to travel to Poland and Ukraine for the summer. I’ll spend the bulk of my time researching traditional and non-traditional legal, financial, and technical mechanisms that can help Ukraine monetize intellectual property. The goal of this research is to find ways to drive capital into Ukraine to support their continued resistance against Russia’s illegal invasion.
I’d love to discuss this project with anyone working in some of the areas or on some of the research questions I have listed below. Even if your work tangentially touches on these topics or falls outside my regional focus, I’d still love to hear about how you are thinking about these issues. Here are some initial questions I’m looking into:
How do wartime controls and export regulations shape IP strategy for Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian companies?
What barriers prevent Ukrainian IP from reaching global markets?
What financing structures and mechanisms work for IP-rich companies?
How are Ukrainian companies currently leveraging IP assets—licensing, sales, joint ventures, collateral?
How do investors value and diligence distressed intangible assets?
Can blockchain and decentralized networks enable secure IP transfer?
I’m also seeking expert perspectives for field interviews and collaboration in these practice areas.
Ukrainian & International Law & Policy: Business, trade, technology transfer, IP, export controls, and regulation and compliance.
Finance: Traditional/alternative financiers, IP commercialization experts, fintech.
Industry: Tech and data-heavy industries, dual-use & mil-tech, medical, energy.
Business: Founders/executives at any size company managing or creating IP.
Regional focus: Ukraine, Central and Eastern Europe (including Poland, Estonia, and Romania), or any business-, tax-, or IP-friendly jurisdictions.
I’d appreciate it if you all could forward this information to your network. Please feel free to message me on this app, or reach out through email or LinkedIn. I think this work has great potential to help out innovative-rich but capital-strapped communities, not only in Ukraine but around the world as well.
Pioneering Oversight’s Top-5 Stories From Last Week
1. Data Brokers Are a Killer's Best Friend
For-profit data brokers directly enabled the assassinations that occurred in Minnesota on June 14th. Multiple stalkings and killings have been enabled by these platforms, where, for under $100, addresses and other information can be purchased outright. This piece explains that there are some opt-out laws in various jurisdictions, but these do nothing to address everyday citizens who do not qualify for these protections. Besides, with so many data brokers out there, it would likely require a heavy-handed response preceded by political will to remove an individual’s location data from the internet for good.
2. Reddit in talks to embrace Sam Altman’s iris-scanning Orb to verify users.
“Reddit is considering using World ID, the verification system based on iris-scanning Orbs whose parent company was co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.” This ID system uses iris scans to verify a user’s identity before creating an account or accessing a website. This article explains how the technology works, addressing many of the trust and security issues that plague other ID verification systems, as well as the understandable concerns about anonymity and privacy.
3. Trump extends TikTok ban deadline for a third time
The probably 180-word article linked in the headline is probably all you need to know: President Trump, again, refused to enforce a law passed by Congress, signed by the President, unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court. Some other good stories on the topic:
My piece on the background of the ban and the issues of free speech and national security:
This New York Times article on TikTok’s ties to the current administration
The president tried to ban TikTok in his first term but flipped his stance on the app last year — a shift that is credited in part to one of his donors, who has a sizable stake in ByteDance, as well as his own growing popularity on the app.
And this Executive Functions piece on the legal rationale (or lack of) for non-enforcement
4. From Iran to China: Using Social Data to Detect Authoritarian Decline
This is an excellent and short piece on how to analyze resistance to authoritarian regimes. New technology can be a great help, and this piece lays out an argument and a brief history on how to approach this. Human intelligence, however, has always been and will always be a key component of the puzzle.
5. GENIUS Act
The GENIUS Act, a cryptocurrency regulatory bill, cleared the Senate this past week and is likely to clear the House as well. Two stories on the soon-to-be-regulated “stable coins” are worth a read:
The Rise of Stablecoins and How to Regulate Them. This piece provides a concise overview of cryptocurrency, stablecoins, their uses (both illicit and legitimate), and regulatory approaches in the U.S. and the EU.
This blog post by the law firm Paul Hastings gives an update on the key provisions of the bill, as well as updates on a host of different crypto-regulatory changes that happened this past week outside of the Senate.
